A World Like That
by tastewithouttalent
Summary: Part of The Moments that We Touch series: volume two. Sequel to Nothing of the Gods. Pre-anime. Stein and Spirit during the time between their partnership and their reunion. Followed by The Person I Might Become.
1. Perspective

It takes days for Spirit to come back up to consciousness, and Kami spends all of them worrying or uncomfortably dozing in a mostly comfortable armchair next to his bed in the infirmary. She knows it is ridiculous to feel guilty about leaving him, that she will sleep better in her own bed and that being at his side every moment of the day does him no real good, but she is willing to sacrifice hours of comfort for the payoff of being there when he wakes.

She gets a reward at last, although it is less dramatic than she imagined it would be. Spirit shifts on the cot, groans at the back of his throat, and then carefully eases his eyes open.

Kami had planned to give him a minute, to let him orient himself and adjust to his surroundings, but her worry and her relief seize hold of her body before she can stop them and she leans forward towards him like a flower towards the sun, reaching out to touch his shoulder to verify that he exists, coming in close to hear him so she can prove to herself that he is real and awake and okay.

Spirit *jumps* at her touch, pulling back before he sees it's her. Kami jerks her hand back, irrationally hurt by his reaction, but then Spirit's eyes focus on her face. His face relaxes into a smile, his body goes limp against the mattress again, and he drags a hand up to reach out for her again.

"Hi." His voice is hoarse but glorious. In the days of silence Kami has forgotten what he sounds like, and the timbre of sound is familiar and impossibly foreign simultaneously, like she's hearing him speak for the first time in her life. Emotion that she thought she had control of climbs her throat and locks down her voice but she smiles around it anyway, and that is enough for a moment.

When she manages to swallow back the threat of tears she has no words adequate for her relief, so she sticks with easy routine. "Hi."

Spirit's smile is still lingering at his mouth but there is something at the back of his eyes that Kami has never seen there before. "How long was I out?"

"A couple of days." Kami forces herself into calmness. All she wants to do is fling herself on top of the weapon and let herself dissolve into tears but that is not going to be helpful, and whether it's his eyes or his surroundings Spirit looks oddly fragile. She hates it. It makes him look breakable and mortal, and while these are both utterly true neither is a truth that Kami enjoys reflecting upon, especially isolated in the silence of her own head as she has been. So instead of pressing his limits she wills her smile to reach her eyes and rejoices that he is conscious and tries to fill the air between them with words.

"You were out cold when they brought you in. We've been mostly worried about your state when you came to, but you're off to a good start." She squints at him. "At least I think so. Either that or you're doing a really impressive job of faking." That wins a shaky laugh out of the weapon, as it was intended to, and Kami's smile becomes genuine in response.

"Seriously though." She trails her hand down his arm to wrap her fingers gently around his. "I'm glad you're awake. I've been really worried."

Spirit coughs and his face twists into unhappiness. "I'm so-"

"If you say you're sorry I will hit you," she cuts him off. "I don't care how worried I've been you are *not* about to apologize for being *unconscious.*"

Spirit has stopped with the word half out of his mouth. He pauses for a long second and then ostentatiously closes his mouth. Kami feels a smile trying to creep back over her face in spite of her best efforts at mock severity.

"That's better."

Spirit's eyes on her face go out of focus, like he's looking at a point just past her head, and the curve of his lips collapses into a line of concern. Then he blinks and is looking at her again, and Kami is certain she knows what he is going to say before he says it, so she bites her lips shut to keep from cutting him off as she wants to.

"How's Stein?"

Kami knows that it is perfectly reasonable for Spirit to think of his meister - ex-meister, she corrects with a surge of inward satisfaction. They have been partners for years, and from what she can tell much of Spirit's energy has gone towards looking after the younger boy. It's natural and understandable and in fact rather endearing that the weapon's first proper concern should be for the other half of the fight, but the part of her that has spent days staring at Spirit's slow-healing bruises and recalling the expression on Stein's face just before Spirit was knocked backwards seethes at the caring implicit in the question. She has to look down in an attempt to hide her expression while she gets her face under control, and when she looks up the concern on Spirit's face almost takes her back down again.

"He'll be fine." She has no idea if this is true; there has been a buzz of concern in the academy for days, but she has been too focused on Spirit to listen to much of it, and the anger in her on Spirit's behalf justifies her answer before she has even fully committed to the words. "You don't need to worry about it."

Spirit blinks up at her and that shadow in his eyes is rising to the surface now, and then he says, "What happened?"

Kami stares at him and she has no idea what is in her eyes. She hopes it is less than what is in her head, because her mind is fast-fowarding through her memory and offering random snapshots: the awful expanse of sutured wounds across Spirit's body, the horrified expression on Stein's face as Spirit stormed up to him, the two of them close enough to kiss and the fury crackling between them, and worst of all the moment when she finally forced herself into Soul Perception a moment too late to do anything to prevent the impending explosion. She had a split-second of clarity looking at them, like she could see the whole path of the next several actions before they occurred. When she saw Spirit's golden wavelength expanding with self-righteous fury, she had been impressed for a moment before she realized that Stein's was dwarfing the weapon's, that the cold white glow was suffusing everything around her, and when she saw it harden into resolve, saw Stein shove hard against the weapon, she had started running but there had been no time to reach Spirit before the attack took him full in the chest. Kami has no idea what happened to Stein after that. She bolted to Spirit's fallen form, started breathing again when she saw that he was, and then realized that she was going to have to leave him in order to get help. By the time she had forced herself to go and returned with support, the meister was gone; there was just the devastation he had left to attest to his presence at all.

Kami doesn't look back up at Spirit for a long time, but her tears drip against their interlocked fingers and he doesn't ask again.


	2. Reassignment

It is not that Marie is surprised by Lord Death's appearance. She has been expecting him to kick her out of the infirmary for months now but is unwilling to move back into her spectre-haunted house until he makes her, and he has been letting her win that contest for the short term. It is the context that surprises her. She is sitting up in bed, listening to the scuffle of unusual activity outside the infirmary door, the sound of running feet and shouted conversations, when Lord Death himself throws the door open and comes into the space.

"Hiya hiya, how's it going?" he burbles at Marie. She has only spoken to him on a handful of occasions, once or twice in her first month at the Academy, and then one discussion just after her last fight. She doesn't recall much of the last, as she has been doing her best to avoid recalling much of anything from that time. The idea of casually talking to Lord Death himself freezes her thoughts still in her mind and the sheer impact of his physical presence in the enclosed space is terrifying.

"Uh. Hi," she tries even as she realizes this is not an answer to the question he was asking. She catches herself and tries to go on just as he begins talking.

"I wanted to -"

"I'm o-" She shuts her mouth on the sound but he has already stopped. He gestures to her with an enormous white glove.

"Please go on!" He sounds friendly and polite, but Marie can't fight back the flush of embarrasment that creeps up her face.

"I was just...uh...yeah, I'm okay. I mean, it's going well." She shuts her mouth firmly then. The pause in the conversation stretches into what feels like uncomfortable length before Lord Death goes on with so much casual disregard for the awkward opening that she only feels less at ease than she did before.

"I wanted to see how you are feeling," Lord Death finally continues. "You've been here for some time and I'm hoping your physical recovery is nearly complete."

Marie appreciates the specificity of "physical", but the implication of what is coming hits her with the cold weight of proper fear. "Yes, I'm doing well," she manages. It's pointless to deny it with the evidence of her health visible in the unbruised skin of her face and the pink lines of healed scars over the more grievous wounds.

Lord Death claps his hands together. "That's great news! How does going back home sound to you?"

Even with the suspicion rising in her the question drops Marie's stomach to her feet and sweeps away all vestige of dignity to which she had pretensions. Her nervousness at being in Lord Death's presence and her sense of awkward, excessive politeness drop out of her mind as full-blown panic takes their place.

"No, no no I don't want to go back, I haven't been there since Roger and I don't want to go back, please don't send me back I'll do anything instead, can't I stay here? Isn't there anywhere else I can go?"

Lord Death lifts a white palm to stem the flow of words. "Hold on there Marie, don't get ahead of yourself. I asked how it *sounded*, not when you wanted to go. It seems that you don't want to go back at all, then."

Marie's throat is choked with fright and desperation and her eyes are filling with the potential for tears but she manages the shakiest of nods before she looks down at her hands in a minimal attempt to disguise the worst of her reaction.

"That's fine!" Lord Death sounds as cheerful as he always does, but he reaches out and rests his hand against Marie's shoulders for a minute. The weight of the contact is deeply reassuring in the moment before he moves away. "We do need to find a better place for you, though. It's going to get pretty crowded here and I don't think being around will be the best thing for you."

"What -" Marie starts to ask, but Lord Death talks right over he with no hesitation for politeness this time.

"I can find you a solo room for a short while, but if we transition you out of here I'd like to make sure your mental healing doesn't get forgotten. Out of sight out of mind, you know." He leans in and for a moment Marie gets the strong impression that he is uncomfortable with the next topic. "How does partnering with another meister sound?"

After getting a reprieve with regards to moving back to her old apartment, Marie can't convince herself to put up much of a fight on this. This she has known is coming, and at least she's been able to consider this possibility occasionally without a total meltdown in her own mind, She still can't control the tears that do overflow now, but at least the resignation gives her control over her own voice when she answers.

"I guess it's inevitable, right?" Her smile lacks the shine of genuine pleasure but she is able to force the curve into her lips.

Lord Death shrugs, his hands out at his sides. "Not entirely. Of course, you have enough control that we could let you return into more standard society. But you have a lot of potential that I would hate to lose, and a partner would be good support for you as well. You have a lot to offer a meister as well, from a personal perspective as well as that of combat."

Marie can identify a comforting compliment when she hears one. Even knowing it's intended to make her feel better, her smile gains an edge of sincerity. "Thanks, Lord Death."

Lord Death brings his hands together in front of him. "We actually had a rearrangement with some of the existing partnerships just now that I think might suit you. You know Spirit Albarn, I think?"

"Yes." Marie's distress is fading under confusion and a sparkle of hopeful suspicion. "Spirit's a weapon, though. Isn't he?"

"Ah, yes, of course. I don't mean for you to pair with Spirit, but rather his partner. They have had a falling-out that makes it best if they are both reassigned, and Stein is much more friendly with you than with anyone else."

Marie feels like her head is filling with helium, like her thoughts are detaching and floating loose of their tethers. She thinks there must be some misinterpretation in her mind, but Lord Death is still speaking, apologizing for Stein's distance and explaining that the meister has trouble connecting with people, and she is hardly hearing him and not recalling any of it. There is a very small voice in the back of her mind that wonders what on earth could have happened to separate Spirit from the meister, but the rest of her is screaming at that whisper to stop looking too closely at this good luck and just accept it as exactly what she wants. It is so precisely suited to her hopes that she can barely believe the reality of the moment.

"That's fine." She cuts off Lord Death without meaning to but she keeps talking this time. "That's great. Really. Fantastic. Good. Yes."

"Are you sure?" Lord Death leans back. "Stein is going to be...struggling. He won't be an easy partner to work with at least for the short term. It'll take some time and a lot of patience and I don't want to push you past your comfort zone."

"Nope. I mean yes. Yes I'm sure." Marie is trying very hard to maintain the edge of dignity at this point but it is hard to express her enthusiasm without giving away all her pretenses to secrecy. "Yes. I can handle it. I like Stein, I'd like to work with him."

She feels that her edits and euphemisms are hilariously flimsy, but Lord Death appears to be satisfied. "Excellent! That's settled then." He stands and his head brushes the ceiling. "Let's go!"

"What? Right now?"

"No time like the present! I'll take you to a room for just a couple days so we can collect your things from your old apartment, and then we'll move you in with Stein at his laboratory and you two can get started!"

There is something unsaid there - Lord Death's words are a little too vague and his speech is a little too fast for perfect forthrightness - but Marie doesn't look too hard. Whatever he isn't telling her can't possibly be worth the loss of this opportunity.


	3. Understanding

It is days before Kami is secure enough in Spirit's recovery to bring up the conversation topic that has been hanging over their heads since the weapon came to. He looks so *broken* that she can't stand the idea of putting more pressure on him than he already has; she wishes she could take some of the weight he is bearing on his behalf, but as she can't very well recover for him the best she can manage is keeping her mouth shut until he is ready to talk about...anything.

It does take some time. For a few days it's hard for him to stay awake at all; he has an IV drip full of painkillers that makes him incapable of carrying on a cohesive conversation and prone to passing out unexpectedly, so for a while Kami satisfies herself with tracking the healing of his physical injuries. It is a very, very slow process, but there's only so much she or anyone else can do, so she does her best to attain a zen-like state of patience and wait it out.

Almost a week after Spirit first woke up, his meds are at a low enough level that he can stay awake for most of the day. Kami was planning on waiting as long as she could to have the necessary conversation, but Spirit brings it up himself and she doesn't have the fortitude to put it off when it's offered to her so freely.

She has started going home to sleep in an attempt to avoid her exhausted meltdown of the first day, although she has still not returned to class and no one has yet tried to force her there. When she comes in in the morning, Spirit is awake and sitting up in bed on an excess of pillows. He still looks awful - although he has been doing almost nothing but sleep his eyes are ringed with dark bruises of exhaustion, and his skin is clammy white - but he manages a smile for her. She returns it with interest even though it makes him look even more tired than he does anyway.

"How are you doing?" she asks as she reclaims her armchair by his bed. She is becoming deeply tired of the same chair and intimately familiar with the tiny characteristics that prevent it from being fully comfortable, but it is a much better option than the alternatives and thus far no one has tried to move it.

"Good," he equivocates. He is doing better than he was in that he is conscious, but Kami has no idea how long it will be before he is released from the infirmary this time. She is starting to feel like all of the major events of their relationship will be conducted in this room after Spirit ends up back here as a result of his former meister's actions.

Not hers, though. Kami is entirely determined to make sure that he *never* ends up here due to her.

"You do look better," she offers in the same vein of half-truth.

She is actually opening her mouth to pick up the inane commentary of small talk to pass the time and to hear Spirit's voice, when he jumps in to fill the silence. "I need you to tell me something."

There is an edge in his tone that sets her back and sends a chill of foreboding down her spine. Her tone is especially nonchalant in response. "Sure, what's up?"

Spirit shifts uncomfortably, looks down at his hands, pulls at the edge of the sheet before he answers. "What happened? The details, not just the general overview. I just - I need to know what's going on now, other than that I'm in the infirmary for some period of time while I get back on my feet."

"Well you have the last part right," Kami offers, half-smiling in an attempt to get a smile back from him, but Spirit just looks up at her with that foreign expression in his eyes and she swallows her forced amusement and goes back to seriousness.

"Stein's not going to be your partner anymore." Spirit doesn't react, which is a relief. "I'm sure you had figured that out by now, of course. That means you need a new meister, and Lord Death would rather not assign you to a brand-new student because you'll be at such different levels." The next bit is nerve-wracking so Kami rushes through it as quickly as she can. "I've got a partner, of course, but a meister *can* have two weapons and Lord Death thinks we'd be compatible, so if you're interested I can partner with you for the last few assignments you'll need to become a proper death scythe."

He blinks but doesn't reject her outright. There is even a flicker of a smile before his face falls back into focused attention again. "That sounds good."

She was hoping for a little more enthusiasm, but at least he has agreed and she will have plenty of time to get him to open back up. Kami tells herself that he has just suffered a pretty severe trauma, that he is coming out of an abusive partnership, that he has a lot to work through and that Spirit is worth it, their relationship is worth it, his potential as a weapon and their potential as partners is worth it, which helps brace her for the next question he asks.

"What about our fight?"

Spirit hasn't said Stein's name directly since his first inquiry after the younger boy upon waking. Kami isn't sure if she needs to avoid it too, but he doesn't flinch away when she does so, and the conversation is already stilted enough by Spirit talking around the elephant in the room, so she carries on straight into the topic.

"I saw most of it." She has been thinking about this for days, assuming that Spirit will ask exactly this, rephrasing what she saw into terms that will buffer the worst of the details. "You were fighting, just yelling at each other, and I thought you might start throwing punches when he pushed you and you went flying backward. It looked a little like he had shocked you. By the time I got there you were out cold, and when I came back with help Stein was gone." She has to swallow hard to continue on with the rest of the story. "You're pretty badly hurt, as I think you know already. You were unconscious for a couple days and that was really what they were most worried about, but there's a lot of bruising that needs to heal too. You've got some cracked ribs so they don't want you to move much on those, and you'll have a pretty cool scar right where he hit you." She is trying to make light of it but the shadow in Spirit's eyes is getting darker and her throat is filling up with sadness and her laugh comes out wetter than it should. "You should be okay, though. At least that's what they're saying right now. We were all really scared for a while, but it's been okay since you came to."

"Is he okay?" The words are very quiet. Kami could ignore them if she wants but she doesn't *quite* have the viciousness in her to do so, not when Spirit sounds so shattered.

"He'll be fine. Lord Death is taking care of it," she tells him. It is technically true, since Lord Death handles everything that occurs within the city. She doesn't know any of the details in this case - where Stein is, what Lord Death is doing with him, whether either of them will ever see him again - but Spirit doesn't push for more beyond what she has offered. He shuts his eyes and half-smiles without any pleasure.

"Well, at least we both survived."

Kami swore that she wouldn't ask, that she wouldn't push, but her curiosity is rising in her throat and she can't fight back the question before it spills past her lips. "What happened?"

She is ready to take it back, to apologize and tell him he doesn't have to talk about it, but Spirit starts talking immediately and she shuts her mouth tight on the expansion to her question because she *is* curious, painfully curious, and if he will tell her without any pushing she will happily listen.

"You saw the fight, or most of it I think. He wasn't - he didn't *do* anything, really. I was yelling at him and telling him off and he was just *looking* at me, looking like he was going to cry maybe and I was *so* *angry*, I wanted to hit him or to make him hit me and I just kept pushing." Kami can hear the misery choking Spirit's words, gathering in the back of his throat, but he keeps talking anyway, even when his closed eyes overflow across his cheeks. "When he pushed me back it was - like he was pushing everything in his head over into mine, kind of like Resonance but much worse, much more and without the mutual agreement."

'Rape' is the first word that comes into Kami's mind, but she - barely - keeps her mouth shut and lets Spirit keep talking.

"It was like - I was reliving the last months over from his perspective." Spirit's hand slides across his shirt, tracing out the patterns of the half-healed cuts Stein left on him in what Kami is fairly sure is an unconscious movement. "I understood *why*. I knew how he felt, how he had been feeling, how he was feeling right then. It was all this awful tangle and it had all gone wrong but -" His throat closes off completely and he chokes on the words for a minute before he manages to go on. Spirit opens his eyes and looks at Kami, and the new expression that has been there since the fight is at the surface and it is all guilt and pain and loneliness. "Kami, all he ever did was *care* about me."

Kami leans forward and folds herself around Spirit. She is trying to be considerate of his injuries but he wraps his arms around her neck like she's the only link to sanity he's got left and starts sobbing properly so he soaks the shoulder of her shirt and she can feel his shoulders shaking under her careful hands. There are words in there too - when she listens Kami can hear the explanations and excuses for Stein that are dragging this misery out of Spirit. She wonders briefly if she would understand if she had felt what Spirit did, but she didn't and she doesn't honestly wish that she had. If Spirit is going to sympathize with Stein's perspective, that leaves no one but her to defend Spirit's.

That's okay. She is more than enough on her own.


	4. Adjustment

Marie knows the moment she opens the door to the laboratory that something is deeply wrong. From the outside the building is overlarge and imposing, but she pushes down her initial discomfort with reassurance that this is what she wants, that this is what she needs, that she will be the best partner Stein has ever had. That's as far as she lets herself go before she cuts her daydreams off with stern application of rationality, but the half-formed images of imagination grant even the grey exterior of what will be her new home a glow of warm potential.

When she opens the front door, ready to greet her new meister or announce her presence if he's not just inside the entrance, the rays of sunlight that penetrate give her a view that stalls her thoughts for a moment before overriding them with horror. The inside is poorly lit if at all, but the concrete of the floor is streaked with dark color in the light. Marie knows what it is before she kneels to touch it with the appalled fascination that tragedy inspires and confirms her suspicion. It is blood, long-dried, nearly black with the loss of liquid form but unquestionably blood. She isn't sure which of the possible options for the original owner is worse.

Part of her seriously considers turning and leaving, going straight back to Lord Death and telling him this is way beyond her, that she does not have the skill or the knowledge or the strength to deal with whatever this is. Another part of her wants to blame her continued forward motion on affection, to hold up her reluctance to leave as proof of her love for the boy somewhere inside. But the greater part of her stays, and the greater part of her knows that she would stay for anyone. If someone is still here, she has to stay, has to do what she can to help. She will hate herself if she hands this off to someone else, so she stays, and she steps forward into the stained corridor.

When the door clicks shut behind her, the hall is utterly dark for a moment, but then her eyes adjust to the dim lighting and she realizes that there is some illumination, not sufficient for the space but enough that she can more than distinguish the dark color against the lighter surroundings. There isn't a clear trail, just splashes and smears along the floor and low on the walls, but they are *everywhere*.

There isn't anywhere else to go but forward or back, and Marie is committed to being here now, so she forces her feet to take her forward. Once she starts moving it is easy to keep going; her body wants to either freeze or run, and if she doesn't let the cold fear take her the burn of panic sweeps in instead. She starts down the hall, barely keeping to a walk instead of breaking into the run that her body is telling her to use instead.

"Stein?" Her voice sounds shaky and weak and tiny, like the heavy walls around her are eating the sound, but she tries again anyway. "Stein?"

There is no response. As her other senses catch up with her vision she realizes there is a sound far off in the distance, too faint to distinguish but unmistakeably there. Sound implies *someone* is there, so she aims for that for lack of a better idea.

The laboratory is as large as it appears from the outside, and what looks like a two-story building is composed entirely of a single floor. The ceiling are impossibly far away and many of the rooms are sized to match, too wide and too long for comfort, but the possible alternative of labyrinthine corridors is dreadful enough that Marie is grateful and willing to jog through any number of too-large rooms instead.

As she draws closer, she is able to identify the faint echoing sound, although her mind offers no explanation as to the cause. It sounds like the grate of turning metal, like a gear grinding between settings, except that it goes on and on without clicking into place as she would expect, and there is an occasional pause in the sound before it resumes.

There is still no kind of a path drawn out by the dried blood, but there is more of it now, brief trails of drips or long smears like someone dragged a wet hand against the wall. There is a handprint perfectly outlined just at eye level next to one doorway. When Marie brings her hand up to match, it's slightly too large for her fingers and just exactly the size that Stein's would be.

It's a surprise when she opens the last door. Her brain had kindly turned off her conscious awareness of what she was looking for, letting her just focus on the single trail of sound and the steadily increasing evidence of something awful in the surroundings. When she opens the door, she watches Stein for several seconds before her mind is able to process what is in front of her.

This room is coated in blood, not all of it dried to darkness. Handprints litter the floor, the walls, the furniture, and Stein himself is so covered that it takes Marie a long minute to realize that at least some of it is his, sluggishly dripping from open cuts along his arms and torso. His shirt is in tatters and so stained that she can't tell that it was once white, his skin smeared with blood so in the dim light it is impossible to tell the extent of his actual injuries. He is draped half-upside down across a couch, head hanging off the edge like he can't be bothered to support it. The left side of his face is coated in blood, his silver hair is matted dark with the stuff, and he is slowly turning the end of a screw that is jutting from the side of his skull.

Worse than the blood, worse than the screw, worse than everything about the scenario, is the expression on Stein's face. He is staring straight through Marie - she isn't sure he sees her at all - with a distant, vague expression, the muscles of his face relaxed into blank slackness. She could handle tears, she could handle anger - given the surroundings unconsciousness or cackling insanity would even make sense - but this mild, confused curiosity is so entirely out of keeping with the setting that it burns itself into Marie's mind. She is very sure that she will never be able to forget this expression, that it will be locked into her memory in perfect, horribly clarity for the rest of her life, and a part of her mind is wailing that this is *too much*, that she does not have the means to handle this situation herself.

Her hands are over her face, covering her mouth but not her eyes, and she is crying although she doesn't remember when she started. It is as if she is expressing all the emotions that are missing from Stein's face while her mind wipes away her preconceptions and tries to build up her understanding of the situation from scratch based on what she is seeing. She has missed something crucial, clearly. Partners don't usually split halfway through training, but this is far, far more than just a partner reassignment; there are years of backstory here that she doesn't understand and can't read past their horrifying result. If she had space to be angry, she would be furious with Lord Death for leaving her to this, but she has nothing in her but horror and concern and confusion for now.

Her legs fold up under her and she drops to the ground, unable to brace herself because she can't get her hands to move away from her mouth. Stein watches her go down with that same blank expression, tracking the movement because it's eye-catching and not out of any real interest. He is still turning the screw; Marie realizes abruptly that it is the cause of the grating sound she followed through the laboratory and that would cause more tears if she weren't already sobbing behind her hands.

Stein's face creases into lines of mild frustration, still just as distant as anything else on his face. When he finally speaks it's not to her, at least not primarily; she gets the sense that she might as well be an object in the room for the consideration he gives her.

"It's not quite right." He twists hard, makes a grimace of displeasure. "It still needs more adjustment."


	5. Quiet

Kami is finally allowed to take Spirit home with her after he spends weeks in the infirmary. The question of Spirit returning to the laboratory never comes up, and she never asks. Neither does Spirit. After his breakdown early in his recovery he doesn't mention Stein again, and Kami is unspeakably relieved that the topic doesn't recur. Her curiosity was more than satisfied by the first conversation, and now that she knows explicitly what Stein did to Spirit she is not at all certain she will be able to calmly discuss the subject with anyone, especially not with Spirit. She suspected that Stein was abusing Spirit long before she had evidence - now she has more than enough and nothing that she can do with it. She knows better than to bring it up with Spirit when the weapon is feeling the way he is about the younger boy, and Lord Death has already done what he can by separating Spirit from the meister's influence. The best she can do now is move forward and leave her desire for revenge behind; it's just much easier said than done.

It is both easier and harder once she has Spirit landed safely in the walls of her and Ashe's apartment. To her credit, the other girl never so much as blinked at the intrusion of an almost-stranger into her home, never expressed anything but concern for the weapon's health to Kami. Ashe has never been very communicative, friendly but distant, but her calm concern right now is so exactly what Kami needs that she has a surge of affection whenever she thinks of her partner. Ashe suggested moving Spirit in with them before Kami had a chance to, and when Kami mentioned putting him up on the couch in the living room Ashe had rolled her eyes and offered, "Don't be coy about it, Kami. We all three know he's your boyfriend, just move him into your room." There is less space in Kami's room for an extra cot, but her partner's assumption implies a permission for which she is eternally grateful.

When she helps Spirit in the front door after the trek from the academy, Ashe looks up from the couch, barely smiles, and raises a hand in a wave.

"Hey there." This is the most Kami has ever heard Ashe say to anyone other than herself or Lord Death, which means the other girl is doing her best to be welcoming. Kami smiles at her in what she hopes reads as gratitude since she can't say anything more in front of Spirit and half-carries him around the corner to her room. He has been bearing less and less of his own weight as they got farther from the infirmary, and at this point Kami isn't entirely sure he could stand on his own if she weren't there. She doesn't mind. It's nice to feel like he needs her, nice to feel like she can help him, like he is finally letting her take some of the pressure from him.

He drops onto the cot unceremoniously, looks up at her with apology so clear on his face that she cuts him off well before he starts speaking.

"Don't." He's not moving but she puts a hand on his shoulder to hold him down anyway. "Don't. Whatever you were going to say, I don't want to hear it, okay? You made it here and you're in one piece, mostly, and I just want you to lie down and rest." It takes very little pressure to get him to fall sideways onto the bed, and once he gets there Kami realizes that he is whiter than usual, his skin clammy with sweat under her fingers.

"Fuck," she blurts without thinking. "Stay right here, I'll be back."

Spirit's eyes are closed when she returns with a glass of water and a damp cloth. He hums in pleasure when she presses the cloth to his forehead but doesn't move otherwise, so she has to coax him to sit up.

"Spirit. I've got water for you, can you drink it?"

He grimaces but pushes himself into a half-sitting position, reaches for the glass she offers, and manages to swallow half of it before handing it back and dropping back to the cot. He is still for several minutes before he speaks again.

"I'm sorry."

Kami would throw her hands in the air if his eyes were open to see and if she weren't occupied with the cloth. As it is she infuses as much teasing frustration into her voice as she can manage. "What did I tell you about apologizing?"

Spirit half-smiles and since he can't see her Kami lets herself smile too. Even exhausted and hurt and damaged as he is, Spirit is in her *room* and is her *partner* and when she steps back enough to realize that, she can't maintain even mocking anger with him. She brushes the knuckles of her free hand against his arm, but even in jest it doesn't count as anything like the punch it is supposed to be.

"See what happens?" Her smile is audible in her voice but she forces it down as much as she can. "I told you I'd hit you if you did it again. This hurts me as much as it hurts you. Don't make me hurt us again."

Spirit smiles properly, but the expression is drowsy and Kami realizes she is losing him to the call of sleep. "I'm so -" He cuts himself off and tries again. "Okay?"

"Better." She leans in to brush her lips against his cheek. His skin is cold with the evaporating sweat of exertion and this close she can hear his breathing slow into the steady pace of sleep. There is nothing else she can do for him, but for a moment she pauses to watch him relax into unconsciousness. She has had plenty of this in the last weeks at the Academy, but it is different with the backdrop of the art on her wall, the books on her shelves in front of Spirit's angular features and soft hair. Even with the lingering lines of exhaustion in his face, he is very beautiful, his red hair and sharp cheekbones just as appealing as when she first saw him in class. She watches him for a moment longer before choosing affectionate distance over creepy hovering and exiting to the living room.

Ashe looks up when she comes out, puts down her book as soon as she sees that Kami is alone. "How is it?"

The stress of the day hits Kami with no warning at all. She sinks to the floor before answering, folds her legs in front of her and wraps her arms around them to steady herself. "It's good. Or it will be good."

"Good." Ashe isn't much for talking and never has been, but she doesn't pick up her book again, just leans back in her chair and interlaces her fingers in her lap and looks out the window at the street just outside. Kami *likes* being needed, *likes* supporting Spirit, but in the last weeks she has forgotten how nice it is to just *exist* without having to hold someone else up. Ashe isn't asking anything of her at the moment, just letting her be and breathe and find her center with the silent comfort of someone else's presence. There is a pang of almost-guilt as Kami feels, again, deeply grateful to the partner she has never really appreciated until now when another weapon has intruded on their pairing.

Kami tips her head sideways to rest on her knees and stares out the window as Ashe is doing while the silence fills up the space around them with comfortable acceptance.


	6. Antiseptic

Marie doesn't know how long it is before she is able to crush her panic aside into a manageable corner of her brain. She settles in the corner of the room, covers her face with her hands, and tries to focus on her breathing instead of the continuous grinding sound from the meister's position.

Eventually the panic burns through her and leaves a distant calm. It is a relief to be out of emotional energy, even if it is only a temporary exhaustion. When the idea of lifting her head no longer seems impossible, Marie looks back up.

At least nothing has gotten worse. Stein is exactly as he was when she came in, still staring past her, still turning the screw apparently set into his head. There will be time for more thorough meltdowns later, Marie tells herself. For now she needs to make sure Stein isn't going to bleed to death right in front of her or catch some horrible infection from untreated injuries.

She realizes she doesn't know where anything is when she tries to find some sort of washcloth or first-aid kit. The building is enormous and empty, as near as she can tell, just a few pieces of furniture scattered haphazardly through the rooms and the trickle of dried blood everywhere she looks. She finally locates a bathroom and confiscates the one towel within for the purposes of medical treatment.

Stein doesn't react when she touches him any more than he reacted to her appearance in the doorway. She does have to work around the continuing movement of his hand, but when she manages to get the top layer of blood off his skin it seems that things looked a lot worse than they are. The cuts are numerous and too deep to be allowed to heal on their own, but none of them look like they were deliberately life-threatening, which is a distant relief. The worst injury by far is the one that has bled all over his face - it is bone-deep from what she can tell, although looking at it directly is nauseating even in the cool removal of her current mental state, and it seems to run all across his scalp as well. She can't get all the blood out of his pale hair with just the one rapidly staining towel; she gets the worst of it from around the wound itself, but it leaves a decidedly pink tone to the lightness of the hair around it.

The screw itself does definitely run through Stein's head once she forces herself to look at it properly. She can't imagine what it does or how exactly Stein managed to get it there on his own, and the possibilities are disturbing enough that she shies away from them. After cleaning up the rest of him, though, she finally has to work on the arm that is still turning the thing, and that means she has to get him to stop.

"Stein." She didn't really expect that to work, but the habits of politeness are deeply ingrained. "Stein, I need to look at your arm."

He doesn't react at all, either by speaking or stopping or even looking at her. Marie can feel the panic rising in her again and she *has* to finish this initial cleanup before the breakdown overtakes her. She reaches out to pull his hand away.

He maintains a surprisingly strong grip while she pulls; she has to loosen each of his fingers' hold individually in order to get his hand free. His arm goes limp as soon as it moves away from the screw, and Stein himself blinks hard, like he's only just started seeing his surroundings again.

Marie knows she should be worried, that she should be ready to move away or call for help based on what Stein does now that he looks more cognizant. What she does feel is determination to finish her goal, and what she does is start dragging the impossibly stained cloth along the gash in Stein's left sleeve in an attempt to locate the source of the blood.

Stein sucks in a breath of air, turns his head to look at her. "Marie?" His voice is nothing like it was before; he sounds hoarse, like he has been screaming for hours, and so faint that Marie can barely hear him. "What are you doing here?"

Marie doesn't look at him properly. If she does she is going to start crying and she has to finish what she's doing first. "I'm your partner." She hadn't planned to say it but the words fall off her lips like she has said them dozens of times before all unthinking.

Stein almost laughs. "Oh." He lifts his free hand to his face while Marie finishes with his left arm. She takes somewhat longer than she needs to for fear of what she will see when she looks back up at his expression.

When morbid curiosity surges higher than dread, she drags her eyes up to his face. Stein is staring past her again, eyes focused on the wall over her shoulder, fingers idly tracing the injury curving across his face. The scar will be terrible, Marie realizes at a distance, but the misery in the green of his eyes where she has never seen any emotion before is far worse to see than the still-bleeding wound.

Rationality takes over her body again. "Stein. You need to get your injuries treated properly. You'll probably need stitches for most of them and I can't do that myself. I'm going to call Lord Death and get someone sent out to help, okay?"

Stein doesn't respond, but he doesn't move either, even when she gets up to find a mirror. The weapon doesn't make a thorough check, but at a glance there isn't anything particularly sharp nearby and she hopes she can leave him alone for a few minutes. She doesn't have much choice, anyway - getting the meister to move seems like an insurmountable task at the moment and she can't fix things herself any more than she has.

Lord Death answers her call almost as soon as she completes the last number. "Hiya hiya, Marie! How's it going?"

It has been a long time since Marie felt anything like rage. After Roger she was lost in depression for a long time; more recently she has been toying with more pleasant emotions to change things up. The fury that is roaring through her right now is familiar, like reconnecting with a best friend she had lost contact with.

"Send someone from the infirmary out here," she snaps, deliberately omitting any salutation or title.

Lord Death stops moving in the slightly hazy reflection. "What's the problem?" He sounds legitimately concerned but Marie's frustration shows no signs of decreasing.

"Stein's been doing his best to kill himself over here for *days*," she spits, "And I lack the medical training to do much about it myself. He could be succeeding right now for all I know, I had to leave him alone in order to call you."

"Oh my." Lord Death's cheerful high tone has never been as maddening as it is right now to Marie. "What happened?"

"I DON'T KNOW." Marie didn't make the decision to start screaming but the words are tearing out of her of their own volition. "I can't *tell* because he's barely *conscious* and he's put a fucking *screw* through his head so I can't vouch for his sanity either." She is hot, blistering hot, like her rage is actually burning through her veins. "Send someone *now* so I can take care of him since *no one else* is."

The mirror shattering under her partially-transformed hand is the more satisfying for the way it splinters the image of Lord Death in it. Marie doesn't realize she is crying again until the shards of now-clear glass are crunching under her shoes. She lowers herself to the floor, ignoring the tiny cuts her hands pick up from the glass fragments under her, and lets herself cry until she hears someone else calling her name and Stein's from the rest of the laboratory.

When she comes out of the bathroom the nurse is standing in the room she left Stein in, staring at the blood on the floor with undisgused horror, and Stein himself is nowhere to be seen. The cold weight of panic hits Marie's stomach before the nurse even speaks.

"Hi there Marie. Where's your meister?"

Marie momentarily thinks of Roger, exhaustion pushing her back into habit too ingrained to be broken through sheer force of will. Then her memory catches up with the present and the far-off fear in her blood. "I don't know. He was here when I left him but it's been a while."

She is afraid the nurse will chastise her for leaving Stein on his own, but he doesn't say anything, just heads for the hallway with a brisk efficiency that is immeasurably relieving to see in someone else. Marie trails in his wake; all her rising concern for Stein is not enough to overcome her unwillingness to be the first to find him again.

The nurse opens the door first, and Marie sees the relief spread across his face before she sees Stein at all.

"I think he's alright," he says to her before stepping forward into the room. Marie follows after a moment.

Stein is curled on a bed, apparently asleep although he is wearing the same bloodstained clothing he had been. His hair is still stained red but the wounds across his arm, chest, and face are cleaner than Marie last saw them and now bracketed with neat lines of stitches that the nurse is now carefully inspecting.

He rocks back on his heels, glances back at her. "You didn't do this, did you?"

Marie shakes her head. She doesn't trust herself to speak.

The nurse sighs. "He did a good job of the stitching, particularly given the angles he must have been working at. I can't do much better than he already has on those. I have *no* idea what he did with this -" he reaches out to indicate the screw parting Stein's hair, although he doesn't quite make contact, "- but I don't want to touch that until we have a better idea of what exactly he did or was trying to do and what his mental state is like. Honestly sleep is probably the best thing for him. He's, uh, lost a lot of blood."

"No, you think?" Marie snaps before she can stop herself. The nurse doesn't rise to the aggression though, just coughs a laugh before he can stop himself.

"Yeah. I guess you knew that." He stands, looks down at Stein for a moment, then turns back to Marie. His eyes fix on her hands. "Let me at least help you with those since I can't do much for him right now."

They go back to the brightness of the bathroom. He doesn't say anything about the glass on the floor, just steps over the shards and sits Marie on the edge of the bathtub so he can inspect her hands.

He has retrieved the fragments of glass and is spreading antiseptic over her palms by the time she manages to speak. "How is Spirit?"

The nurse glances up at her and she tries to explain. "Something pretty awful must have happened in order for Stein to do this to himself. It wasn't just an argument, was it?"

The nurse looks back down, and when he speaks he answers her first question and not the second. "He's unconscious. It's been a couple days and he hasn't come to yet."

"Will he be alright?" Marie is whispering but she can't increase her volume. A horrible sense of symmetry is curling through her, telling her that Lord Death chose her because she knows what it is to have her partner die, that she is supposed to hold Stein up if Spirit dies, and she *knows* that she can't, even she wanted to, even if she knew *how*.

The nurse pauses before he answers, and when he speaks it is as soft as her question. "I don't know. I hope so. We won't know until he wakes up."

*If* he wakes up, Marie's mind rephrases. She doesn't ask for more details.


	7. Alignment

It is Spirit who brings the subject up first. Kami is willing to give the weapon as much time as he needs to recover from the various mental and physical injuries that he has suffered, but Spirit is barely back on his feet before he suggests a trial run in weapon form.

"We're supposed to go out on assignments, right?" There is a flicker of a smile that reminds Kami of the weapon when they first met. Then it is gone and he is back to his sad-eyed current state. "We should at least try to partner a couple of times, get some experience before we go out for real."

There is nowhere near enough space in the apartment, of course. There is barely enough room for all three of its current inhabitants to comfortably coexist in the living room, so in the interests of maintaining peace Kami and Spirit go looking for a more open space in the streets of Death City.

There are only a handful of others out on the streets, and the alleys about the city are plentiful and offer at least the impression of privacy. Kami leads the way into one before she turns and gets a good look at Spirit. He is looking pale and slightly shaky, though no worse than he has in the last few weeks. As compared to his appearance while he was in the infirmary, he is the picture of health, and just transforming shouldn't be much of a strain with no real fight or physical work associated.

She still has to ask. "Are you sure you're up to this? It can wait, you know."

Spirit nods decisively even though his skin goes whiter. "Yes. Definitely. This will help, truly. I'm just - tired of worrying." The curve in his lips is not amused, just self-deprecating. "It's just." He stops, brings a hand to cover his face. Kami wants to snap at him for it - it's so much harder to read him recently that the loss of facial expression is maddening - but she keeps her mouth shut and after a moment he continues.

"What if we're not compatible?" Kami can only barely piece together what Spirit is saying but the weapon keeps going. "I've only ever tried partnering with my sister when I was a kid and with - and I really hurt her, and you're not a scythe meister, what if we can't work together?"

"Spirit." The weapon doesn't move his hand or respond. "*Spirit.*" She has to pull his hand away from his face forcibly, and even then his eyes don't refocus on her face. "Spirit, *look* at me."

For a moment Kami thinks the weapon is still not going to respond, but after a pause he slowly brings his gaze up to meet hers. There is nothing but fright in his eyes but she talks to him anyway. "Spirit. We will be *fine*. Your soul wavelength is perfectly compatible with mine; a little different than Ashe's, but definitely compatible. We'll practice together; it might take a few attempts before I catch up to your skill -" She tries a self-deprecating smile of her own and gets a flicker of amusement in response at the back of Spirits eyes. "- but we'll get there. We can't improve until we start, though." She straightens her shoulders, extends her hand. "Transform, Spirit."

He hesitates for a long minute, but then he reaches out to carefully wrap his fingers around her wrist. When he shuts his eyes and sighs she knows she has won, and a moment later his human outline dissolves and rearranges itself into a scythe.

He is a beautiful weapon. Kami has seen Spirit in scythe form before from a distance during classroom demonstrations back when Stein still bothered to show up to class, but from a distance the most striking thing about him is the sheer *size* of the weapon. Up close the color of the blade itself is gorgeous, a flat black that drinks in the light around it. It is an oddly intimidating weapon form for a boy who is so approachable in person, an embodiment of the contradictions Spirit carries as easily as his self.

Kami closes her hand around the scythe's handle. The grip is odd, different than the hilt of Ashe's sword form; the weight is all wrong and without a defined grip she feels like her hold will be prone to slipping. Either she will need to develop calluses or start wearing gloves so she doesn't run the risk of dropping Spirit in the middle of a fight.

She can feel Spirit in the very back of her head, like a whisper from another room. He is flickering in and out, but she catches alternate words in his speech - *Ka - is - normal?* - and the rising panic over them is strong enough that she can feel it, even without aligning their wavelengths, even without Resonance.

"Spirit." She speaks aloud so he will definitely hear her. "Calm down. You're doing fine." The panic stops increasing but doesn't dissipate. She has to take a handful of deep breaths before she can get her own echoing worry to a manageable level.

"Okay. Remember, we've never worked together before." Kami deliberately brings her voice to a low register, speaking carefully and slowly in an attempt to calm the weapon. "You'll need to adjust yourself to mesh with my wavelength. You've only ever worked with one other meister before and obviously he and I are somewhat different."

There is a flicker of confusion from Spirit. Kami continues. "I know it's been a while, but you must have done this when you started at the academy." The avoidance of Stein's name is becoming inconvenient, but the goal is to calm Spirit, not trigger a breakdown. "Just take a deep breath. Close your eyes." Kami's voice is soothing to herself and Spirit's panic is fading out of her awareness. "You can feel me, right?" That was rhetorical. She goes on without waiting for an answer. "Just relax. Let your habits go. You're not used to working with me but it'll be fine. You'll just need to adjust a little. It won't hurt, I promise."

She can feel the trickle of amusement in Spirit's head more clearly than anything else before even though it's brief and faint. There is a distant sense of friction as Spirit's soul wavelength shifts to align with hers. There's not much needed, which is gratifying, but it is *different* than Ashe. Spirit's wavelength is stronger, has more potential; it's like Kami has been handed control of some enormous passive machine and needs to decide what to do with it. It would be overwhelming if it weren't for exhilaration of the *power* at her fingertips.

*Kami?* That is clear now, though still faint. Kami exhales in what feels and sounds more like a sigh than anything.

*Hi, Spirit.* She doesn't speak aloud, doesn't need to now. She can feel Spirit far-off in the back of her head, a bundle of tangled emotions, half-controlled panic and tentative excitement and lingering confusion and a deep underlying sadness that she doesn't want to look at too closely.

She tries swinging the weapon in front of her. Her first instinct is to wield the scythe like a sword, which doesn't work out well for either of them. The weight of the blade pulls her sharply off-balance and she almost falls before dropping Spirit entirely.

"Sorry, sorry!" She picks it back up. "Bear with me, my normal approach is not particularly effective here." When she tries again it is much slower, a careful arc so she doesn't pull her own feet out from under her. Spirit is heavy, much heavier than she is used to, but manageable. Kami makes a mental note to add a little training on the side so she can comfortably handle the extra mass of her new weapon, but even with her current state it only take a minute or two before she manages to swing Spirit in what could be somewhat threatening to another and not dangerous to her or to him.

Her arms are shaking when she stops, and in the interest of retaining all her limbs she sets the scythe down. "Okay, let's stop there for now."

Spirit transforms back as soon as she speaks. He is still paler than Kami would like, but the tension of panic is no longer creasing his face and there is something that is almost a smile at his mouth. The lingering sadness is still in his eyes, closer to the surface now than it has been recently, but Kami is determined to clear that away with time and confident in her ability to do so.

She smiles at him and that wins her a mirrored response. When she offers him a hand he takes it without hesitating, and she reaches out with her free hand to smooth his hair.

"You're great," she tells him, as if he didn't know, because she's not actually sure that he does. "I'll make you the best death scythe Lord Death has ever had."

When Spirit smiles this time, she almost can't see the sadness Stein left behind in his blue eyes.


	8. Improvement

Marie is asleep when Stein comes looking for her. He slept for so long that she gave up on waiting out his recovery and fell onto the couch in the living room to buy herself a few hours of rest. She still doesn't know where anything is, and she doesn't have the energy to go looking through the house while it is still painted with Stein's blood, and she *really* doesn't have the energy to clean up said mess in her current state. Eventually her body throws up its hands and tells her to sleep, that the world will be warmer and better and safer when she wakes up, and even though she knows that's not technically true she also knows that it will at least *feel* that way, so she uses her jacket as a blanket and curls into the side of the couch, her back to the world and eyes squeezed shut so she can shut everything out for a while.

When she jerks awake, she's not sure at first what broke her from the hold of unconsciousness. There is a moment of vast disorientation, where she can't identify what she's looking at or where she is or what has happened, but *something* serious, something she has to remember, is at the back of her mind. She filters through her memories and the awareness hits her like the recollection of loss just before Stein's voice comes from behind her.

"Marie."

The weapon jumps, twists around so fast that she actually falls off the couch and lands on the floor with enough impact that the pain washes out her startled fright. Stein edges backward, although he was already far enough away that she came nowhere near landing on him. His eyes are shadowed by the minimal lighting and she can't read his expression, but he is standing and speaking and that is better than it was.

"Stein." She starts to push herself up, feels the wave of pain from her fall, and decides that staying on the floor is less undignified than the alternative of possibly failing in attempting to get to her feet. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," is what he says. That is a laughable lie and Marie knows it, but at least he sounds more or less coherent. She can chase after honesty later.

Marie smiles up at the shadowed face in a half-hearted attempt at pretending everything is normal. "That's good."

There is a pause. The weapon wants something to say, to fill the quiet, to either confront the horror of the situation or continue to pretend that all is normal, but she can't decide which option would be better and her indecision locks her in silence.

Stein decides for them both. He sits down where he stands, dropping in a motion that looks more like a crumple than a controlled movement, and the lighting shifts to shine off his glasses and highlight the dark edges of his injuries before he speaks.

"How is Spirit?" He is attempting monotone, Marie can tell that much at a distance, but the effort falls short on the other weapon's name as the meister's voice cracks with emotion that she can't identify beyond the quantity of it.

Marie wants to look away. Her instincts are telling her to grant Stein the minimal privacy of dodged eye contact, to tell him everything is fine and everyone will be fine and fast-talk past the subject, but her memories of her weeks of isolation in the infirmary override her. She looks away briefly, then swallows and braces herself and looks back.

"He's alive." There is a flicker of morbid humor in the back of her mind. "Like you."

"Will he be okay?" That is very quiet. Marie can barely hear the words at all and Stein tips his chin down so his whole face drops into shadow and she can't properly see his expression.

There are any number of lies or equivocations that she could use to respond, but when Marie blinks she remembers Stein's direct approach when no one else would talk to her, and she squares her shoulders and says, "I hope so."

Stein shuts his eyes. The motion is all Marie can see in the shadow but it is enough. She has done her part for honesty and now she can give in to her instincts and look away from the meister as if the bookshelf in the corner is the most interesting thing in the room.

The meister doesn't look back up. Marie keeps waiting for him to sigh or speak or lift his head or even sob, but it is as if he has tipped his head down and just shut off entirely. After what feels like an eternity of waiting and debating whether leaving or breaking the silence is the better option, she clears her throat and speaks.

"Do you have any sort of cleaning supplies?"

Marie isn't entirely expecting a response, but Stein shakes his head almost before she finishes the question, and when he speaks his voice is surprisingly steady. "No. I haven't been here long enough to need them."

"Well, you definitely need them now." It is a factually true statement, but Marie's voice swings high on hysterical amusement. She has imagined being Stein's partner more than once since he came to see her in the infirmary, but every aspect of the current situation is wildly different than her expectations. "I'll go and get some."

When Stein doesn't respond to that, she tries a different tack. "Are you -" It strikes her as incredibly foolish to ask again if he is okay when he is clearly anything but and she rephrases. "Do you want me to have the nurse come back? Or we could go to the infirmary. He said you dis a good job patching yourself back up, but..." She doesn't actually have an ending for that sentence and it trails off into uncertain concern.

Stein lifts his head. His expression is serene and distant, like the pain in his voice never existed, like he isn't sitting in a room painted with blood from his self-inflicted wounds. His eyes are flat, the dim light reflecting off the color and showing nothing else so they give away no more than the glasses in front of them do. He brings his left hand up to the screw protruding from his still-stained hair and turns it carefully. Marie can hear the grind of metal on metal, and she cringes even though Stein doesn't react at all. When it audibly clicks into place he blinks and only then speaks.

"No." The tone is flat and not at all aggressive, but it has as much finality as if the meister had screamed it. "I'll stay here. I can take care of myself."

"I can help too," Marie offers. The idea of Stein trying to doctor his own injuries is heartwrenching enough that it overcomes her panic with regard to those same injuries. "I don't have much experience but at least I'm another set of hands."

"I can handle it." There is another unspoken 'no' at the beginning of that and a dismissal of the offer that is both arrogant confidence in his own abilities and skepticism of her own. Stein pushes himself to his feet and turns away before Marie can formulate a defense of her own non-existent nursing skills.

The weapon wishes she could get back to sleep, but the pain in her hip and the edge of irrational frustration in her head make it clear that is a lost cause. The bloodstained wall draws her gaze and a sigh.

"It's *fine*," she mumbles as she pushes herself to her feet and shifts the worst of the bruise out of her muscle. "He'll warm up to me." Saying the words out loud, even under her breath, makes it easier to believe them. The flare of optimism thus invoked is enough for her to force a smile onto her face, even when she confronts the macabre designs once again.

She points a finger at them and continues her soliloquy in a slightly louder tone. "You've *got* to go. Enjoy yourself while you can, 'cause I'll be back!" The sound of her own voice is helping, filling the space with proof of her existence and chasing away the lonely silence.

Marie lifts her chin and aims herself in what she devoutly hopes is the direction of the front door. *I can do this*, her thoughts murmur, and whether it is Stein's current rationality or her own optimism that does it, she actually believes them.


	9. Learning

Fighting with Spirit is mentally and physically exhausting. When Kami thinks back to her original assignments with Ashe, she knows that this is normal and nothing to worry about, but in the moment it is keeping her slightly off-balance and wearing through her energy faster than she expected.

They are still not in any real danger, of course. Kami has been fighting with Ashe as her partner ever since she started at the DWMA, and in the years of their partnership they have both become experts at standard fights. Her current target is a low-level Kishin egg, something that would normally be assigned to a new student on her first or second fight. Kami was irritated at the assumption when she first saw the details - she and Spirit are *fine*, thank you, perfectly compatible and both quite experienced - but as soon as they entered combat she found that experienced with Ashe and Stein is not the same as experienced with each other, and both she and Spirit keep forgetting what they are doing and reverting back to their old habits.

The target is loping towards them, eating up the gap between the two students and itself. Kami has been on the retreat much more than she would like to be; she keeps closing with the target, stepping well within the effective range of the scythe in her hands, the years of swordwork she has had with Ashe telling her subconscious that she needs to remove the space between her and the target. It is odd to swing the weapon in her hands so early, when the enemy is barely close enough to hit her itself, and to connect with anything other than air. The weight is strange too; the scythe is balanced very differently than her usual sword, the weight all at the end and far away from her own center of mass. Kami is used to throwing her weight behind a swing and now she has to lean away, tip her weight backward to stay balanced with the weapon in her hands.

Spirit has been surprisingly unfazed for the most part. There was no sign of fear from him when the Kishin egg burst out at them; Kami jumped but her connection with Spirit's mental calm didn't waver with *anything*. He is right with her when she dodges and moves and swings, taking the greater part of his weapon-weight with his passive assistance. It is when she first manages to coordinate their movements that they run into a problem.

Kami has been focusing on avoiding damage to herself or to Spirit, staying out of range of the attacker's slow attacks while she applies the practice they have been doing to the actual combat they are in. She can't swing when she is too close, so she edges back in her distance until there is enough to move properly. The weight is at the end of the weapon instead of balanced along the blade; that means she has to bring all of her upper body strength to bear when she swings, although Spirit feels less heavy now than he did initially. The counterbalancing is the hardest part; even telling herself to lean against the swing it is hard to overcome the years of training she has been doing.

Finally she gets it right. The distance is perfect, her swing is smooth and controlled, and when she angles her torso backward the scythe pulls her forward and she stays upright. Spirit cuts into the Kishin egg - and their connection dissolves momentarily. Spirit has been very quiet but the comfort of deliberate silence is different than the echo of isolation that hits Kami's mind. The weight in her hands increases very slightly but it is enough to throw off her swing. She stumbles forward, the enemy dances backward, and she doesn't even have time to panic before Spirit is back in her head.

*Sorry sorry sorry!* The weapon is speaking before he even reconnects and his wavelength is jittery with the panic that has been absent until now. *I'm so so sorry!*

*Breathe.* Spirit can definitely feel the frustration that is forcing its way through Kami's best attempts at calm, but she modulates her inner tone to stability and breathes past her own disorientation and irritation. *Just stay with me, okay?*

*Okay.* Spirit's thoughts are still laced with apology and self-directed frustration, but Kami can *feel* him bring his focus to bear on holding their wavelength resonance, and as long as they can work together for the moment she can worry about soothing his feelings after the fact.

It only happens the once. As if to make up for his original lost focus Spirit's attention surges forward on every swing Kami makes after that first one, so they drop into something very nearly like full-blown Soul Resonance with every attack. It is satisfying to feel so connected, impressive to know that Spirit has the ability to conform so completely when he tries. Kami considers trying something more elaborate, deliberately drawing out the fight somewhat so she can gain more immediate practice with her new partner, but her arms are starting to shake and she can identify foolish bravado in herself, so she steps forward to the Spirit-specific distance and takes what she *knows* entirely will be her last swing.

Spirit's blade slices through the enemy as if it is made of paper, more smoothly than anything Ashe has ever done. Kami wishes she wasn't comparing the two weapons so explicitly, but the association is inevitable and turning in Spirit's favor as far as raw potential goes. She cuts off her inner monologue at that point - inevitable or not, it is a little too heartless to be reviewing Ashe's weak points while Spirit is in the back of her head - and sets down the scythe in her hands so the ground supports the weight instead of her arms.

There is a moment for her to appreciate the relief in her shoulders and back before Spirit transforms back into his usual form. He looks fine, better than Kami feels; she is sweaty and bloodstained and he looks untouched.

Kami reaches out to touch Spirit's arm and smiles. "Good job. We'll build up from here."

"I am *so* sorry -" he begins before she talks over him.

"You were *great.* We'll do even better next time but you were *fine*. It's hard to keep everything in your head at the same time and you've not had to maintain our resonance during combat before. It's just like starting over from the beginning." She maintains her smile with deliberate focus. "It'll get easier as we practice more. Don't worry. You were great."

Spirit doesn't relax entirely - his apology lingers in his hunched shoulders and his shadowed eyes - but he does stop vocally apologizing, and his mouth curves in a tentative response to her own cheer.

Kami gestures towards the glowing red soul hanging where the Kishin egg stood. "It's all yours."

Spirit's smile vanishes like it had never been. He stares at the soul like it is the real enemy instead of the spoils of battle, doesn't move for so long that Kami begins to worry that he is more injured than she suspected or more mentally off-balance.

She slides her hand along his arm to rest between his shoulderblades. "You okay?"

"Yeah," is what he says but the affirmative doesn't reach his face. Still, after another moment he steps forward and away from Kami's touch. He hesitates before he reaches for the soul, then grabs it and brings it to his mouth in one rushed motion.

Kami smiles. "There's that, then. First assignment complete as partners!" She comes forward to stand next to Spirit. He is utterly white, his lips pressed together, eyes shut; he looks like he might pass out or be sick. Concern surges above the satisfaction of a completed mission and Kami reaches out to touch him again.

"Spirit?" He doesn't answer, doesn't move at all to indicate he hears her. "Are you okay?"

He sucks in air through his nose, opens his eyes. In the paleness of his face the color makes him look worse by comparison, like he is on the verge of total collapse. "I'm - not -" Kami can see his throat spasm. "I'm going to be sick." He pulls away from her hand, stumbles forward, drops to his knees and retches.

When he pushes himself shakily to his feet and turns, some of the blood has come back to his skin.

"Are you okay?" Kami comes towards Spirit but doesn't touch him. "Good thing you didn't have dinner. Were you feeling sick then too?"

Spirit blinks at her, coughs a laugh. By the time he speaks his color is normalizing. "Yeah. I - just a little nauseous tonight, I guess."

"Will you be alright?"

The rise of renewed health in Spirit's face answers before he does. "Yeah. I think I'm better now."

"That's good." Kami does reach out then, brushes her fingers across the back of Spirit's hand, smiles. "For a minute there I thought it was the *soul* making you sick."

Spirit's smile fades out before it rallies. "Yeah, just kind of weird today. I'm sure I'll be fine next time."

"If you're not feeling well, tell me okay?" Kami waits for Spirit's nod before she goes on. "I don't want to run the risk of either of us getting hurt because you're not at full, you know?"

She curls her fingers around Spirit's and after a moment he returns the gesture, interlacing their fingers so the warmth of his skin seeps into Kami's fingers even though his expression is still unusually distant. "Let's go home."


	10. Relief

After a week, the stitched-up injuries across Stein's face have healed enough that Marie can look at them without cringing. She still can't stand the sound of the screw turning, which Stein has started to do absently every few minutes; the grind of metal-on-metal brings up far too many questions about *what* exactly he did to himself, and she doesn't want to ask them because she is afraid she will get an answer.

The constant, not-quite-regular sound of Stein's new...accessory is the only thing that is really difficult to live with. In that regard, things could be much worse (Marie tells herself). The dim lighting of the laboratory is frustrating and disorienting, but Stein doesn't put up any kind of a fight when she adds a pair of lamps to the living room, nor does he protest when she expands her lighting crusade out to the hallways and shared spaces of the rest of the building. A rug and her own furniture with the dust of disuse carefully cleaned before it was delivered go a long way to counteract the industrial feeling of her own room, and although the kitchen is very nearly empty when she moves in, at least Stein never leaves a mess from cooking himself.

The meister himself is better than her first day frightened her into worrying. He is distant and absent much of the time: he does not volunteer information about himself, he does not ask her for information about herself, and she barely sees him if she doesn't go actively looking for him. Her original fantasies of bonding as partners and her flustered daydreams of blossoming romance are so far gone as to be laughable in retrospect, but after her first introduction to the reality of being Stein's partner Marie knows intimately that it could be much, much worse, and a rational and uninjured meister seems like the height of luxury in comparison.

There is also the satisfaction, the *comfort*, of having a partner again. Stein may be distant, he may hardly speak to her, his inner life may be almost a complete mystery, but he is a *person* just quietly existing around her, and even though they have not Resonated and haven't even tried to partner yet the title of "meister" settles into him like a second skin and Marie can't shake the pleasure of that, even if its actual effects are intangible or non-existent at present.

There is always one thing she can talk to him about. So far she has seen him every day, at least once, and every time he stalls for more or less time before asking about Spirit. The first day he wouldn't look at her, could barely say Spirit's name much less form the question he wanted. By the end of the week, when he comes out of his room and finds her drinking tea at the kitchen counter, she knows what he will ask before he even says it.

"How is Spirit?" He doesn't need to specify, a pronoun would be enough, but the question is carefully precise and the tone is carefully devoid of emotion and both scream the intensity of his concern, and Marie suspects that speaking the syllables of the weapon's name is a comfort itself.

Unlike the preceding days, Marie has actual *news* today, and the pleasure of her temporary secret is fizzing through her in delightful anticipation. She draws it out, taking a long sip of the liquid in front of her and carefully swallowing before turning to Stein with entirely feigned calm. It would be nice if he reacted to this little show a bit more; instead he is standing where he always does, within range of her voice but well out of physical reach so even accidental contact is prevented. The light from the kitchen ceiling is catching off his glasses so Marie can't see his expression and the rest of his face is set into perfect stillness, like the practiced relaxation of his body.

Confronted with this brittle self-control there is a very brief flare of irritation that makes Marie want to be contrary, to tease Stein with the knowledge she has and draw out some sort, any sort of a reaction. She feels bad almost as soon as the idea appears, and in a sort of penance she drops her facade of cool immediately and lets herself smile in relief.

"He woke up today."

Stein's shoulders tighten. Her smile should be enough promise of optimism to calm him but his body tenses in anticipation of the details. Although she still can't see his eyes Marie keeps talking, faster now, spilling out the details as rapidly as she can while maintaining coherency.

"He's fine, or at least he seems to be fine. Bruised and battered and -" She would edit out the next piece of information if she had thought of it in time, but the phrasing the nurse used is on the tip of her tongue and pours out without any time for editing. "- Depressed, but physically he'll be alright with time to heal. Kami's been assigned as his new partner; they should be able to go out on their first assignment together as soon as Spirit's recovered a bit more."

Stein's chin tips so he is looking straight up and Marie can't see his face at all. The fear in his shoulders fades, his hand comes up to his uplifted face, and even at her careful distance Marie can hear Stein sigh. It is something of hurt and something of gratitude and something of resignation, and she no longer wants to see behind the wall of his glasses to his eyes.

After a moment he brings his head down, and when he looks up the reflection off his glasses is gone. His expression is calmer than she expected, although the ugly tracery of stitches outlining his left eye does add a certain level of the macabre to the pained relief in the lines of his face. The emotion in his expression is terrifyingly *human*, normal in a way that it itself uncanny on his reconstructed face.

"Thank you." Marie clings to the monotone like a lifeline; everything else about this moment is surreal enough that she thinks she might be dreaming.

Stein reaches up to his screw and turns it. The motion is perfectly judged, quick and clean, just enough to get the sharp *click* of machinery settling into place before he takes his hand away.

"I'll request an assignment for us from Lord Death."

The utter lack of segue leaves Marie feeling off-balance as the conversation turns without her. Luckily Stein isn't waiting for a response from her, just carrying on with his new topic.

"We should get experience working as a team, move forward with making you into a death weapon. I don't think you were very far along, were you?"

"Uh. No." Stein is so business-like that Marie answers before she can mentally poke at the half-healed hurt of Roger, and then he is talking over her *again*.

"Good. We'll be starting from the basics then, it will give us time to get used to working together. Are you up for an assignment right away?"

Marie is gaping at him; she can't close her mouth, can't clear the surprise from her face, and the words that tumble out of her are as uncontrolled as her expression. "Are *you*?"

Stein *smiles*. It is very fast, just a flicker of amusement across his face, and it pulls the pattern across his skin in a movement that Marie imagines must be painful, but she has never seen pleasure reach his eyes before and that makes even the wounds in his skin strangely beautiful. She chokes on a breath and as she blinks her memory locks down the impression of that smile so she can remember it, so she can tell herself that her new meister *does* have feelings, *does* express himself sometimes. Even the proof that his display of pleasure during their original conversations was a facade doesn't diminish the delight of her current revelation.

"I am." He finally answers, and that is all Marie can think of to say. When he leaves, she can't muster the words or the coherency to try to stop him, to demand what just happened, to beg for further explanation, so she just stays where she is and stares after him while her tea goes cold.


	11. Exit

"Kami."

The meister is curled up on the couch reading a novel, but something in her partner's tone seizes her attention. She looks up, and the expression on Ashe's face is even more worrying than her voice and the plot of the story in her hands flies out of her head entirely.

"Ashe. What's up?" Kami asks as she lets the book fall shut.

Ashe comes around the edge of the couch to stand in front of her meister. Her hands are in her pockets, her shoulders set at an angle that has the outer trappings of calm. If Kami hadn't been living with the other girl for four years, she wouldn't suspect the weapon of having anything important to say. The simple fact that Ashe is initiating conversation is worth noting, though, and there is something worrying in Ashe's eyes and in the firmness of determination along her chin. Kami can't imagine what the other girl has to say, but the existence of *something* is unquestionable.

"Seriously," Kami continues after she sees Ashe's face. "What's going on?"

Even with the prodding, Ashe doesn't speak right away. This is normal, at least; she will get to her subject when she is ready and no sooner, no matter how much Kami pushes. She is like this in fights too; Ashe is a passive observer until she is ready, which means Kami always needs to wait to take the final swing until her partner is ready for the movement. It is the single most frustrating aspect of the other girl that Kami has experienced. As far as personality quirks go, the meister realizes this is relatively minor, nothing like what Spirit has been dealing with, but she has been noticing it more and more by comparison with Spirit's total compliance.

When Ashe does finally break the silence, Kami has to reel her thoughts away from her mental soliloquy and back in to the present moment. Then when she realizes what Ashe has said, it takes her another long minute to process the statement.

"I don't want to be a death weapon."

Kami blinks at Ashe. The book in her hands falls to the ground and neither she nor Ashe reacts at all. When the door opens, neither of them turn towards it.

"Hey there Kami -" Spirit starts, then takes in the scene in front of him and goes utterly quiet.

"Shut the door, Spirit," Kami commands without turning. Ashe isn't panicking yet and it is crucial that she finish out this conversation before her weapon - her *first* weapon, she corrects - loses her nerve to say what she has to say.

The door clicks shut and Kami does her best to entirely ignore the whisper of Spirit's breathing from the corner. He doesn't move, doesn't try to make conversation or even walk through the room, and Kami is unbelievably grateful to his sensitivity to emotional overtones.

"Ashe. What do you *mean*?"

Ashe looks as steady as Kami as ever seen her, the more impressive given the audience they now have. "Just what I said. Was I not clear?" In Kami's mouth those words would twist into sarcasm, but Ashe sounds, and is, entirely sincere.

"You *were*, but -" Kami pauses to let Ashe jump in, but the other girl maintains her calm stare and shows no sign of speaking, so she goes on. "That's what we've been working on for the last four *years*. How long have you *known*?"

Ashe shrugs with absolutely no sign of self-consciousness or guilt. "After our first few assignments."

"Why didn't you *tell* me?"

"Because *you* wanted to make a death weapon." Ashe makes it sound normal, logical, like this was rational behavior instead of a waste of years of her time. "I'm not cut out for this. It's not for me." There is a hiss of breath from Spirit's direction but neither girl looks in his direction.

"Why now?" The words are all wrong but Kami can't form the questions she really wants to ask in her head or on her lips.

"Because of him." Ashe tips her head in Spirit's direction. "He's a better weapon than I will ever be and you know it."

"No he's not," Kami tries to protest, but she *does* know it and the lie falls flat in her mouth.

"Yes, he is," Ashe continues. Her voice is soft but utterly denies any possibility of rebuttal. "He's an amazing weapon and he's close to being a deathscythe already, and you can't *really* focus on two weapons at once. No one has said anything because you didn't want to acknowledge the problem and *he* doesn't want to rock the boat but someone had to, and it's ridiculous to fumble forward when I don't really want this anyway. Now that we know you two are compatible, it only makes sense for me to leave."

Kami feels like she should be crying or protesting or feeling anything at all. Instead there is cold shock and horrible pleasure. She doesn't want to admit that Ashe is right, will never ever admit to the other girl that she is right in this, but the rising relief and associated shame are choking her and she can't open her mouth for fear that she will start laughing.

"So." Ashe takes her hands out of her pockets and crosses her arms over her chest. "I should be able to leave whenever I want. Lord Death says I've had enough training that I'll be perfectly safe out in the world."

"Wait. You talked to *Lord Death* about this?" The hysteria is fading and now Kami's emotions are whiplashing into a sense of utter betrayal. The immediate satisfaction of having the apartment and the partnership to herself (and Spirit) is fading, the relief of having one weapon all but gone, and the loss of her best friend for the last several years is rising. The fact that Ashe didn't even *talk* to her first, that she went directly to Lord Death, as if Kami had no say in the matter at all, hurts more than Kami thought anything could.

"Of course. He was very understanding, actually."

"Ashe." Kami stands up. "Why didn't you *talk* to me about this?"

Ashe sighs. "You wouldn't have listened, Kami. Like you're not listening now."

"*What*? I *am too* listening!"

"No, you're not. This is rational, this is reasonable, every person in this room wants things to go this way and you're just getting upset because you feel like I didn't *consult* you on this." Ashe *still* sounds perfectly calm, which just makes the accuracy of her words harsher. "In this one thing, listen to me, Kami. *It will be better this way.* You don't *really* want me anymore, and that's *okay*, I'm giving you an *out*, just *accept* it."

Kami is not practiced enough at lying to plausibly disagree with this. She wants to argue, wants to scream or yell at Ashe - for leaving, for being *right*, for saying all this in front of Spirit - but the only thing she can manage to do is start crying, which is the last thing she wants but the only thing she can't prevent.

Ashe smiles, and for a moment Kami is upset enough to snap, "You don't have to look so *satisfied*," but then she can't talk at all around the tears and Ashe's arms are around her shoulders and Kami's are around her waist and the meister is sobbing into the weapon's shoulder.

"I don't want you to go," she whimpers. Kami can't recall the last time she let her voice take on the whining tone of resigned misery it has now. She can't remember the last time she *let* someone make her feel like this. But she has taken Ashe's presence so entirely for granted that this is far more devastating than she had expected.

There is a very brief whisper at the back of her mind suggesting that Stein may have felt this way when Spirit left, may *still* be feeling this way, but Kami is utterly incapable of handling the possibility of similarity between her and the other meister, so she shuts down the murmur and clings to Ashe and cries while Spirit stands forgotten by the front door.


	12. Replacement

Marie can't sleep the night before her first assignment with Stein. Her mind is racing through horrible scenarios and things that she can worry uselessly about, and she can't refocus herself on anything else. She couldn't sleep before her first fight with Roger either, but that time the meister had been just as nervous; they had stayed up well into the early hours of the morning not-watching television and existing in the comfort of each other's space. Marie half-wishes that sort of companionship was possible with Stein and half can't imagine her new meister doing anything so casual or normal. At least he seems unfazed by the assignment. It's not as immediately helpful, but there is a cold reassurance to his own apparent unconcern at their impending combat. He hasn't even tried to wield her yet, which would worry the weapon if he seemed more absent or more concerned, but since the news of Spirit's recovery Stein has been utterly calm and collected, as if to make up for the self-destructive insanity Marie found her first day.

The weapon begins to regret her insomnia as soon as the sun rises and her exhaustion hits her. She leaves her room with every intention of going to class and forcing her way through the day, but her vision won't quite focus and her body feels like it weighs far more than it ought, and her thoughts are so sluggish that when she finds Stein in the kitchen she sits down and stares at him blankly for minutes before she thinks to question what he is doing there.

"Stein?"

The meister glances back from the open refrigerator before his quick visual analysis turns into a more committed stare.

"You didn't sleep," he finally says. It's not an answer but Marie didn't really ask a question, so she just smiles guiltily.

"I couldn't." She looks away from the meister's considering gaze. "I did try." When her thoughts catch up to her response she looks back, realization giving her a viable defense. "Wait, did *you* sleep at all?"

Stein shuts the door of the refrigerator and turns fully to face her. "Don't go to class today. You should get some rest before the fight tonight."

"You didn't answer my question," Marie persists. "We're both part of the assignment, you know. Me being prepared is no good if you aren't."

Stein's eyebrows rise in a flicker of surprise. He reaches up to twist the end of the screw through his head, and there is a breath of a pause before he leans forward to rest his elbows on the counter and speaks.

"I don't sleep much." He is closer than Marie can recall him ever being; this close she can see the faint traces of healing in the injuries spiderwebbing his face, the smudged signs of sleeplessness under his eyes. "Working on days of consciousness is perfectly ordinary for me. It's not for you." He lifts his hand, reaches across the space between them like he's going to touch her shoulder. His eyes follow the movement of his hand and Marie's are fixed on the expression of his face. His lips press tight, his eyebrows draw down in concentration, and then he blinks, his face relaxes into resignation, and his fingers draw back short of actually touching her.

"I need to be able to count on you tonight." His voice is utterly controlled, smooth with the polish of enforced calm. "If I can trust you to be at your best, you can count on me to handle everything else. That's what a meister should do."

Marie blinks at her meister. His voice is calm but the shine off his glasses is gone and his eyes are *beautiful*, green and deep in a way they have never been before, like the reflection is gone off them as well as from the wall of glass in front.

"Okay." The admission isn't hard to make. She wouldn't be able to do anything in class anyway, and Stein's gaze is utterly clear and focused in spite of the physical exhaustion in the lines of his face. Even with the evidence of his shaky mental balance etched into his skin, she *wants* to trust him to handle everything tonight. She hopes that's valid trust and not just the surging desire in her to follow a meister's lead, but she lacks the energy to fight the desire even if that's all it is.

Exhaustion grants Marie the distance from her thoughts that she couldn't attain the night before. She sleeps through the day and awakes as the sun is setting. It is deeply disorienting, but a shower and breakfast (dinner?) take the worst of the edge off.

Stein returns as she is finishing the dishes. Marie didn't even know he was gone until the fading red light of sunset spills through the front door and deposits Stein in the laboratory.

"Marie." The meister is walking fast, every movement perfectly efficient but outlined with a speed that whispers of adrenaline. "Are you ready?"

Marie can feel the ice of panic flood through her system and speaks fast, before it can stop up her voice with honesty. "Yes."

"Good. Let's go."

Marie doesn't even think to dry her hands until she is already halfway down the hallway to the front door and leaving a trail of dripped water behind her. She flicks the worst off and wipes the rest against her skirt, but the dampness on her skin leaves an evaporating chill that echoes her rising fear as it dries.

She begins to fret as she follows Stein down the hill that cuts straight from the laboratory to the edge of the forest. When should she transform? Is Stein expecting her to initiate the change? Is he irritated that she isn't already in weapon form? What if he doesn't catch her? What if they're not ready when the Kishin egg attacks? There are dozens of things she can worry about instead of the fact that she hasn't ever partnered with anyone but Roger, that she has no idea if they are compatible, that she is trusting her life and Stein's to a meister who put a screw through his head the last time he was left alone. It is easy to drown out the valid fears with foolish ones.

Marie almost runs into Stein when he stops. The light is fading but there is still plenty for her to see his shoulders straighten, his back lock into a textbook-perfect curve.

He angles his right arm out sideways, fingers extending like he's reaching for her hand. "Transform." It's very quiet so Marie doesn't speak out loud, just shuts her eyes and lets the other option for her body take charge of her form. She doesn't worry that Stein won't catch her until she is dropping through the air, and there is almost no time for her to do so then because he does, of course, his fingers curling around the grip of her handle before he fully takes the weight of the weapon. The sheer mass of Marie's form pulls his arm down sharply - he's not quite braced enough for it - but his balance is fixed enough that he doesn't fall, doesn't even angle sideways.

Stein shuts his eyes for a moment. Marie is ready to reach out, to interlace herself with the meister's wavelength as she and Roger used to, but before she can initiate Stein is aligning his wavelength with hers, fitting against her like the sea against a shoreline. It's unsettling and touching at once; Marie is left with nothing to do but relax into the unfamiliar intimacy of Stein's thoughts in the back of her mind.

She doesn't see the target until Stein's focus starts to blend with her own. It is not that his vision is any better than hers, but he is utterly fixed on a point in the darkness a few yards in front of them, and when she stares long enough the outline of an unnatural shape begins to form. When the meister begins to move forward, the shape detaches from the surroundings and matches him, moving with an uncanny roll to its motion far more unsettling than the shape outlined against the fading sky.

Marie doesn't realize that Stein is holding her more easily until he leans forward into a run and swings her hard at the middle of the oncoming creature. It dodges, but only just, and Stein is closing again, swinging again; this time she connects so hard she can hear bones crunch, feel the impact jar through her like the warm thrum of a bass or the purr of a loud engine. The sound the thing makes is the opposite, high and screeching and painful, but Stein is still right on top of it, right within its range, and swinging again, backwards this time. Marie can hardly believe that the meister's never used a hammer before; he is throwing his shoulders into his movements like he's always known how to do this, his wavelength syncing with hers as he moves, and there is no overt communication at all. She doesn't need to tell him what to do, doesn't need to explain how to use the long handle or the extra weight of her weapon-form. She can just follow the meister's movements like a dance, let the half-formed coherency of his thoughts guide her motion so when she hits the impact has all the weight of both their efforts behind it.

By the time the creature collects itself from the initial onslaught, it is hissing and spitting blood and Marie is fairly certain she has broken most of its bones, but the torn claws along its hands don't need much strength to rip into skin. It starts to flinch away from the hits, pull back so they hit with less force, dance sideways so Stein has to spin to face it instead of bracing himself for maximum efficiency. They are still winning, unquestionably, but it looks like it's going to be a slow slog instead of a fast conclusion. Marie is settling into the rhythm of the give-and-take, preparing for the endurance needed for several minutes of fighting, when *something* brittle and sharp like broken glass breaches the smooth surface of Stein's thoughts.

She hesitates. Stein's next swing lacks the full focus of her attention and the Kishin egg dodges it entirely, but there is an edge to this new emotion that worries Marie and doubt in her trust is pulling her out of alignment with Stein's wavelength.

*Stein?* she asks, hoping to get a response via lack of specificity rather than risking asking the wrong question.

*Steady,* is all she gets. The meister steps in even closer, well within the reach of those arms, and then he is laying into the monster with fresh energy, hitting on every swing, keeping himself unharmed by occupying the Kishin egg with full defense. The hissing from the creature is constant, a wail of pain and anger that is making Marie's teeth ache, but anger is winning, a timer demanding response *soon*.

A portion of Stein's thoughts coalesces into unreadability. It is as if he is tuning in on a different frequency simultaneously, so Marie can hear the buzz of static but none of the coherency in the words. He swings once more. The Kishin egg darts backwards, swings to attack, and Marie knows that Stein can't dodge, that his balance is all wrong to either step backward or move, and the horror of certainty locks her into immobility.

Then Stein's other hand comes forward, swinging with all the off-balance weight of his body behind it, and his left palm crashes into the bloody torso of the creature. There is a burst of green light, a tingle of electricity that sweeps across the Kishin egg, Marie, and Stein all three, and a surge of unexplained pain in Stein's head. Then the creature flies backward, its cries cut off sharply, and it hits the ground and doesn't move again.

Marie waits to transform until Stein releases his grip on her handle. She shifts back before she hits the ground, landing on her knees next to him.

There is a moment of silence before she speaks. "What did you *do*?"

Stein flexes the fingers of his far hand, clenching them into a fist and relaxing them before he answers, and as close as she is Marie can hear him sigh before he responds. "I hit him with my soul wavelength."

"*Directly*?"

"Yes."

"I - I didn't know you could do that." The statement is obvious but Marie can't think of anything else to say.

Stein huffs an imitation of a laugh but doesn't respond. After another pause Marie stands and goes to collect her new soul.

It tastes like any other, which hardly seems fair. There should be some *difference*, some change to indicate the loss of her meister and the loss of her eye and Stein's own half-acknowledged hurt curving across his face, but the experience is so much like her first that it brings her a flash of deja vu.

The sensation is fleeting, though. The sound of Stein turning the screw in his head grates through Marie's thoughts, and she has to shut her eyes to see Roger's face instead of turning around. But she is alive, and Stein is standing, and the future seems...possible, now. When she comes back to the meister, Stein's glasses are orange with the fading light, but he reaches out to brush his fingers against her elbow, and this time he completes the motion so there is a flicker of pleased warmth across Marie's skin before he pulls back.

She walks behind him on the way back to the lab so he can't see her smile or her tears.


	13. Official

"Kami?"

Spirit's voice is very loud in the darkness of the bedroom. Kami was more than half-asleep, but the last several months have taught her that when Spirit sounds like he does now she needs to listen, so she stifles her groan and rolls over so she won't fall back asleep.

"What is it, Spirit?"

"I - I'm worried."

*No, really?* Kami's sarcasm hisses, but she manages to bite down on the snap before she lets it go and closes her eyes until she has a tentative grasp on her temper again. Spirit is a good partner, she tells herself. He is usually perfectly easy to live with, helpful and sweet and affectionate. His occasional late-night panic attacks are a small price to pay for the regular warmth of his sleeping form and the way she can make him smile by doing nothing at all.

After a pause that is only slightly too long, Kami responds with a calmness that is only slightly forced. "What about?"

"Do you know how close we are to graduating?"

"What are you talking about, Spirit?"

"Well, students are supposed to make or become death weapons, right?"

After a moment Kami realizes that Spirit is waiting for her response to this. "Right."

"Uh. We're really close."

"What?" Kami is fully awake now. She sits straight up in bed and turns to stare at Spirit even though she can't see him. "How close?"

"Uhhhh..." Kami's estimation goes up with every breath before Spirit finally speaks. "I was at 58 when..."

That sentence trails off in the special suggestive way that has come to mean "Stein" between them. Kami runs calculations in her head for their assignments over the last eight months and coughs when she comes up with a total.

"Spirit. Are you really saying you're *eight souls* away from becoming a Death Scythe?"

"Well, and a witch's," Spirit clarifies needlessly.

Kami rolls her eyes in the dark. "Okay, *nine*. I had no idea we were so close."

"Uh. Yeah."

"You -" Kami starts her sentence before she stops the criticism and pauses to rephrase. Spirit has shown an alarming tendency to crumble under direct attack, and while she is hoping to build up this ability in him in the meantime indirect commentary has proven far for useful. "It would have been helpful to know this earlier."

"I - I didn't realize until I counted everything up earlier today." Spirit's voice is still echoing in the night-quiet of the room, but the lack of interruption means the apology in his tone is perfectly audible.  
Kami reaches out to rest her hand against the skin of Spirit's shoulder. It's not even that this is an unpleasant surprise, just that it is one at all, and Kami has some trouble dealing with unexpected events. Luckily she has discovered out that Spirit is very easy to soothe; any sort of physical contact, even grudgingly given, results in all the tension leeching out of his body as it is now.

Kami wishes she were so easily relaxed. All the lethargy that was creeping over her has sloughed off, and she can feel her shoulders locking with tension and nerves at the prospect before her. A handful more fights and they will be fighting a *witch*. That in and of itself is dangerous, would be terrifying to another, but Kami assumes their success in that as well as everything else and her thoughts go spiraling off beyond. Spirit a *death scythe*, herself the meister who *made* him one, the first true Death Scythe in dozens of years. They will be *famous*, they will be *idols*. The anticipated acclaim is already singing in her ears, the rush of completion surging through her veins; it takes her a long while to realize that Spirit said he was *worried* and that doesn't entirely make sense.

"What are you worrying about, Spirit?" She isn't feigning interest now; her exhaustion is gone, swept aside in the rush of excitement, and curiosity is getting the better of her.

There is such a long pause that if Kami couldn't feel Spirit's tenseness under her fingers she would think he had fallen asleep, as he has been known to do at a moment's notice. Finally he shifts, rolls towards her, and speaks again.

"I don't want to lose you."

"What? You're not going to *lose* me," Kami retorts in an effort to ignore the unvoiced "too" at the end of Spirit's sentence.

"We won't be partners anymore." The words are getting softer as Spirit speaks, trailing off into inaudibility as he goes on. "I'll be Lord Death's weapon and I don't want to stop being partners with you." He reaches out to Kami's free hand, curls his fingers around hers. His next words are so soft Kami barely hears them. "I want to stay with you."

"Oh, Spirit, we'll still be *together*."

Spirit shakes his head against the mattress. "You might leave, though. We could be apart for months. How do we know we'll stay together? That we'll wait for each other?"

"Spirit." There is no response. Kami brings her hand from his shoulder to stroke through the softness of his hair instead. "Do you think I'll leave you?"

The lack of response is deafening. Kami smiles, caught between touched amusement and wanting to roll her eyes at Spirit's insecurity.

"I'm not going to," she says, but Spirit doesn't relax and it's clear her words are not going to do any good on their own.

She is about to try another tack, soothe Spirit's confidence with compliments and kindness, when the weapon speaks again. His voice is soft but clear in the shadows.

"We should get married."

The silence that falls is absent any interruption, including breathing, for several seconds while Kami's expectations shatter apart and she has a brief moment of unequivocal shock wipe her thoughts clear. By the time a clear idea crosses her mind, she is ready to seize on anything and blurts the words out as soon as they offer themselves.

"Aren't we awfully *young*?"

"No." Spirit's voice is high and defensive and Kami wants to kiss him for how utterly nervous he sounds. "We're both of age. We're about to graduate the Academy. I don't think anyone would argue our right to make decisions about our life."

"But...but..."

"We've already been living together for almost a year." Spirit is gaining steam and speed both, talking so rapidly that Kami can't get a comment in sideways regarding the *extremely* generous estimation he has just made. "We're compatible as a team; lots of weapons and meisters get married who can't work together at all, so we've got the jump on them."

"It's not exactly a *race*." Kami's rational side has reappeared and begun forming cohesive arguments, but it has brought her emotional half online as well, and that part is starting to burble about *marriage* and Spirit *proposing* and she has to convince herself or lose the battle to sentiment entirely. "And we've got plenty of time. It's not like we have to get married and have kids right this second, we've got time to think about it."

Spirit doesn't answer out loud, but the sound of his sucked-in breath does the talking for him.

"Oh my god." Kami feels like she's been hit across the face. "You want *kids*."

There is a very brief pause that carries as much weight as usually require several minutes of loaded silence. "Yes?"

"Woah. Okay. Uh. Okay." Kami laughs. It seems the only thing to do in the current circumstance. "You want to have this conversation *right now*?"

"There's...never a good time." Spirit *sounds* very passive, very willing to capitulate, but Kami isn't actually entirely sure he will let this go, and besides she can't possibly sleep now until this is resolved one way or another.

"What on *earth* brought this on?"

Another pause, longer but less full of unsaid thoughts. "I...was thinking about our next few assignments. We've been doing really well, we're a great team, but...witches are dangerous, Kami. What if..." A pause for a rearranging of thoughts so clear Kami can almost hear the whisper of them shuffling in Spirit's head. "Accidents happen. I started thinking about it and I'm your weapon so I'll be there to protect you, of course, but - do you remember Roger?"

"Yes." Kami is starting to see where this is going. The subject dampens the teenage-girl excitement in her and casts potential illumination on Spirit's seemingly abrupt concerns.

"I don't want that to happen to you. Or to me," he adds as an afterthought. "But this last assignment is going to be dangerous no matter how ready we are, and we'll keep being in danger as long as you're a talented meister and I'm a Death Scythe, and I just want things to be official."

This is not quite touching the subject of children but Kami lets that go. Really she isn't ready to talk about that right now anyway; better to leave it for later when she's had some time to form her own opinions about it and, ideally, the sun is up.

"Spirit Albarn," she says, and she can feel Spirit flinch at her tone. He tries to pull his hand away from hers but she tightens her grip to hold him in place. "Did you just *propose* to me?"

"Yes?"

"Then you leave me no choice." She drops his hand so she can hold his head steady between her palms. "I shall have to accept."

Spirit chokes on a laugh and a sigh of relief. When Kami brings her lips against his, neither of them can stop smiling enough to actually properly kiss the other, but given the context, she supposes that doesn't much matter.


	14. Alternatives

Marie hates visiting Lord Death. After spectacularly telling him off back when she first became Stein's partner, she managed to avoid speaking to him directly for months. She read their assignments on the posting board between classes, Stein would report back any unusual results after a fight, and she could fully dodge the potential confrontation. When she finally did have to speak to him again, he behaved as if nothing at all had happened, which was far and away the most awkward result that could have occurred from her perspective. Not that she would change anything about what happened - she meant every word - but it would be much easier if Lord Death demonstrated some sort of *reaction* to her expressed frustration. As it is she doesn't know if he listened or ignored her. She doesn't know if *he* would change anything if they had it to do over again.

She is deliberately distracting herself, she knows. Stein is next to her and the teacup in her hands is burning her skin and getting lost in her own thoughts is easier than looking at Lord Death's oversized mask on the other side of the table and *much* easier than trying to stop thinking about how close Stein's knee is to touching hers. She knows perfectly well that that line of thought is going to be even more unproductive and frustrating than trying to read Lord Death, but reining herself in is a battle she is doomed to lose.

At least she doesn't have to say anything. She sets the too-hot cup down on the low table over her ankles and clasps her tingling hands in her lap. She focuses all her attention on what Stein is saying instead of the faint nervousness under his calm monotone and stares at the table grain in front of her instead of watching Stein's lips as he speaks.

"Lord Death, I have a request."

"Oh?" Lord Death tips his head to the side and brings the teacup, shrunk to doll size in comparison with his hands, to his mask. Marie wonders briefly how he is drinking - *is* he drinking? - before giving up that line of thought as also futile. There are many, many things about Lord Death that stop making sense if looked at too long.

"Marie and I are an excellent team." Marie wishes that there was some way to stop the flush of pleasure in her blood at the placement of her name so close to Stein's self-reference. She is well old enough to be past the fluttery excitement she has been suffering recently, but her body seems to think it's about thirteen and similarly rebellious under the rule of her thoughts.

"That you are! I'm so glad things have worked out for you both!" Lord Death's voice doesn't believe in punctuation other than question marks and exclamation points. Marie is beginning to suspect that Lord Death is a much better actor than she has given him credit for, that his voice and enthusiasm and amusement are as much of a mask as the white one that covers whatever face he has. This is distraction too, though, an attempt to avoid the subject that she knows is coming.

"I would like to request to work with other weapons as well."

There. That's it. Even knowing what's coming doesn't entirely blunt the sharpness of implied rejection. Marie can't argue with Stein's logic - he argues his case so well there is almost no viable defense. Besides, he has done nothing to lead her on. He has been unfailingly polite and cool and distant and all three hurt like he's screaming at her. Sometimes she dreams about him. Those nights are the worst nights, only because she has to wake up eventually. She wonders if Stein ever dreams about anyone. If he does, they're definitely not about her.

The pause stretches long enough that it breaks into Marie's abstraction. When she looks up, Lord Death is looking at her, or at least his face is pointed in her direction.  
"What do you think, Marie?"

She did *not* expect this. Stein was supposed to do all the speaking, lay out his rational points while she nodded around the tightness in her throat and looked willing. She reaches for the tea and swallows a mouthful to buy time, even though the heat scalds her mouth and his fingertips protest the application of warmth.

By the time the pain has faded she is able to force a smile and speak. "I think Stein's right. We work really well together, but he has a lot more potential that what he can build with just me." She pauses, locks her eyes on a knothole in the table, and pushes onward past what she and Stein discussed. "He could be a great meister to *anyone*, I think, and it would be a disservice to his skills to tie him down to just one. He's going to be the best meister the Academy has ever seen."

There is a brief pause and Marie suddenly realizes she has spoken like she has any authority on the matter at all. She considers apologizing, but it seems silly when she *knows* she is right. If Lord Death isn't as utterly incompetent as he sometimes seems, he knows it too, and Stein...Stein knows his abilities better than either of them. He isn't egotistical but he doesn't politely play down his own abilities either. He *must* know how good he is.

Assignments used to be hard, Marie knows. She can recall having to push herself to participate in a fight, to help Roger keep his balance, to maintain their Soul Resonance, and she and Roger never had the Resonance difficulties some other partners had. By Academy accounts they were a good team.

Working with Stein isn't like being part of a team; it's like handing over the entire project to the meister, so he maintains their Resonance and coordinates their movements and leads Marie carefully to exactly where she needs to be. It is *easy* to work with him, it takes almost no effort at all, and it is one of the more demoralizing experiences of Marie's life. Feeling useless is so unpleasant that sometimes, before she catches herself, Marie finds herself wishing that Stein would have another breakdown, that she could be helpful to him again in a tangible way beyond being a weapon he can use to destroy. And she's not even unique in *that* anymore.

"I agree entirely!" Marie is able to look at Lord Death again once he speaks. His mask doesn't show much emotion but his eyes are turned up in the closest thing to excitement that he ever shows. "Most meisters have trouble wielding multiple weapons, but I think you are right! I'll arrange your next assignment to include another weapon. She'll be quite different from Marie, so you'll get some new experience, Stein!"

Stein nods. He doesn't look at Marie at all, and it is only then that Marie realizes that her gaze has gravitated towards him. Again. From the side she can see the color of his eyes, and she can see that he's not looking at her.

"I expect you'll continue working with Marie as well!" That is almost a question and Stein responds to the almost rather than the actuality.

"Of course. I'll continue collecting souls with her as well; she'll make a great Death Weapon."

The compliment is delivered with perfect sincerity and neutrality. The pleased blush that takes over Marie's face is out of proportion to the comment, but she has become hypersensitive to everything regarding Stein, and the flattery of the words is enough to counteract the calmness in his voice.

"That's just great, kids!" Lord Death looks like he wants to clap - he actually moves his hands towards each other before remembering the cup still nestled in one enormous palm and aborting the movement. "It's great to see students taking the initiative like this. You both have a lot of potential!"

"Thank you Lord Death," they both echo in unplanned unison. Stein stands before Marie does but she follows after a moment, nodding to Lord Death in what she hopes comes off as polite friendliness before they leave the Death Room.

Neither speaks until they are nearly at the end of the overhanging guillotines marking the hallway to the Room itself, when Stein heaves a sigh and extricates a hand from the pocket of his white coat to twist the screw in his head.

"That went well."

Marie has to smile. "Of course it did. You're asking for more work, really, what sort of instructor would be upset by that?"

Stein smiles. He is still not looking at her, and his gaze is abstracted, like he's seeing something in the darkness of his imagination rather than the light of reality, but at least he looks happy. Marie has learned how to pull a smile from him whenever she wants; the next step is to get him to *see* her at the same time. Still, she is echoing his expression, right down to the distant sadness in his eyes. She can't help it. It's not that Stein himself is so everpresent and dominant that he forces his attitude and his emotions on her - it's rather that she is tuning in to him all the time, listening to his signal rather than sending out her own.

If she could stop, she would. At night, on her own, Marie can let her imagination run wild, but when Stein is next to her the gap between them is unavoidably obvious. She wonders if spending every waking moment with the meister would be enough to break her attachment apart under the weight of honest observation. The irony - that spending *more* time with the meister might help *destroy* her unreciprocated affection - is enough to win a laugh from her, and Stein glances at her with that same faroff pleasure before they lapse back into silent introspection.


	15. Instincts

Kami lets the subject wait for a few weeks after she and Spirit are married. Spirit's enthusiasm gives her less time than she would like to make the event plans, so until the wedding itself occurs she has very little time to do anything but throw herself into planning and organizing while Spirit floats around in a daze of charming but ultimately useless bliss.

The wedding itself ends up being very small. 'Intimate' is the euphemism for such things, Kami knows, but it seems silly to call it anything other than what it is when there are exactly ten people in attendance besides the two of them, and five of those are Spirit's immediate family. Stein never comes up, even in the form of the careful void that usually holds his place. That, at least, is getting better; in the panicked rush of wedding planning Kami goes *days* without thinking of the other meister. It is strange when she realizes this has happened, like a wound she has forgotten to prod, but rationally she realizes this must be healthy, and it is a relief that she is able to again spend time with Spirit without the constant shadowy awareness of the weapon's previous partner.

Looking back on it during the month of vacation Lord Death grants them, Kami doesn't remember a whole lot of the weeks leading up to the wedding. She was happy - she is sure she must have been, anyway, although she doesn't remember anything other than the stress - but it is an enormous relief to sleep in, to wake up with nothing to do, to spend the day in bed with Spirit if she feels like it. But as soon as the pressure of planning is past, as soon as she can expand her considerations out beyond the final-point of The Wedding, the topic of children floats to the surface of her mind. She doesn't want to talk about it on their honeymoon, so she holds the thoughts in the silence of her head and lets Spirit manage his own, but she does think them, especially in the mornings when habit wakes her hours before her weapon - her *husband* - rises to consciousness.

At first the idea is terrifying. They are *so* young. Making life decisions that affect only themselves is reasonable, or at least defensible. They have been de facto adults for years at the Academy already and making their own decisions that whole time. But children? It seems the ultimate in pretension, to assume responsibility for another person, to believe that *you* have the ability and skills and knowledge to raise a child to adulthood. Kami does extremely well in rising to challenges; she can adapt quickly, although it's not a pleasant prospect, and she has not yet come up against a situation she didn't conquer. But all the examples she considers are situations in which she didn't have a choice, when the responsibility was forced upon her rather than something she chose, and the idea of *opting* to take on such an enormous task is absurd.

The change happens so fast that Kami has no time to apply rationality or logic to it. It's three weeks into their month-long vacation, and Spirit is sound asleep when Kami wakes up all at once. Usually they go to bed together and Kami is up hours before the weapon; Spirit can happily stay asleep for nine or ten hours at a stretch, while Kami rarely needs more than seven. She considers getting up, rejects the idea, rolls over onto her stomach and turns her head so she can watch Spirit sleep.

It has been over a year since she really *looked* at him, she realizes. Before she spoke to him the first time she would spend hours in class memorizing the curl of his hair and the way his shirts fit across his shoulders, but since they started properly dating first nerves and then custom have stripped her attention away from Spirit's tiny perfections. His hair is tangled against his face, catching on his nose and eyelashes like a veil. His lips are parted with the relaxation of sleep, his jawline is sharply defined against the curve of his neck, his eyelashes are dark against the pale skin of his cheek. He is the most beautiful thing Kami has ever seen. Even the off-center starburst scar across his chest adds to the whole by comparison. She's not sure how she became used to this, how she stopped *seeing* this every day, but life has distracted her. She promises herself that she will pay more attention in the future, that she will really *look* at Spirit more often.

Kami is smiling without thinking, relaxed into passive observation as she so rarely is, and that is when her maternal instinct makes its move. Her brain offers up the image of Spirit-in-miniature, a redhead son with her eyes and his hair, and briefly she wants that as she has never wanted anything in her life. It is intense and terrifying, as if the stereotypical desire for babies has stolen control of her emotions and inserted itself neatly into her head, but even the foreignness of the reaction can't wholly override the desire.

*Well. That's that,* Kami's rational side offers up, and then she is laughing, hysteria and panic and desire bubbling up out of nowhere into uncontrolled sound. Spirit shifts, groans, opens his eyes. It makes him seem human instead of artistically perfect, but Kami's lingering attention brings out the color of his eyes and the shape of his cheekbones even against the force of normal sight.

"What's going on?" he mumbles, smiling in spite of his sleepiness in response to her laughter before he even knows the cause.

Kami reaches out to push the hair back from his face before she answers, her fingers trailing across his skin.

"Let's have a kid."

She can see the exact moment the words filter through to his awareness. His eyes go wide, his mouth drops open, and he sits straight up in bed in a flurry of alertness. "Are you serious?"

Unfamiliar self-consciousness is filtering into Kami's body, stealing her coherency and her normal breathing pattern, but she manages to nod around the uncontrollable smile that is spreading over her face.

"Wow." Spirit pulls his hair back absently; it falls back forward the moment he lets it go. He is still staring at Kami, but the shock in his eyes is giving way to delight like she's never seen before. "That's - good. Wow."

Kami forces a mock scowl onto her face. "Is that all you have to say?"

Spirit laughs, the sound startled from him before his expression can react to her words, and then he leans down to kiss her and quite thoroughly banishes the thought of children from her mind for some time.

"I hope the first one's a boy," Kami says after, her mouth against Spirit's skin so her words come back to her in a puff of warm moisture.

"Really?" Spirit smiles. She can't see his face from her angle but she can hear the pleasure in the sound of his voice. "I always thought I'd like a daughter, actually."

"I guess we don't have to stop with one."

"Nope. A whole house full, if you want." Spirit's tone makes it clear that he is willing to full up *multiple* houses with children if Kami consents.

"We'll start with one and see how it goes," Kami allows, and Spirit laughs.


	16. Expansion

It is strange to have other people in the - house, Marie wants to call it. She wants to call it home, wants to think of it as a refuge, but it's not that, not yet and maybe not ever, and every time she tries to think "house" her brain stutters and settles on "building," "laboratory," "structure" instead. Regardless of what she calls it she has become accustomed to the quiet whisper of Stein's existence and the often louder proof of her own presence. Sid and Nygus are strange in the setting, like the sound of bells in the woods; pleasant but unexpected.

Marie doesn't entirely know what to do with them now that they're here, although she's the one who invited them over in the first place. Having someone to talk to, to *really* talk to, seemed like an excellent idea a few days ago but now she can't recall how to go from polite greetings and small talk into "so I'm in love with my meister and he's working with other weapons and oh god I just need a friend." Or the equivalent thereof.

Sid helps himself to a chair without being asked, and after a moment of rigid consideration Nygus sits next to him. Marie sits across the table, tries to think of something to say, stands back up.

"Do you want some tea?" she offers.

"Sure," Sid answers for the both of them. "That'd be great."

Marie ducks out of the room to hide in the kitchen behind the busywork of preparing beverages and the sound of the kettle and cups. She stays in the other room while the water boils, telling herself that everything will be fine and it's not as awkward as it seems.

As she comes out with a cup in each hand, the sound of the front door opening comes down the hall. Sid takes his cup without reacting, but Nygus turns in her seat to track the echo; she doesn't relax until Stein comes around the corner.

"Hey Marie," he says first, then takes in the guests at the table. "Hey there Sid. Nygus." He even nods at the other girl. He is doing a better job of appearing casual than either Marie or Nygus, although Sid looks entirely at home and raises one hand in an offhand wave. "I haven't seen you in a while. How's the kid?"

Marie's mouth drops open in mingled shock and confusion. Stein is *never* talkative, never friendly or *normal* like this, and remembering the toddler from the Star Clan fight is more than she managed and socially adept in a way that is positively eerie coming from Stein. Sid responds without appearing to see her reaction. "Black Star's a handful. Lord Death has been really helpful in getting us backup; if he didn't we'd have more than a full-time job keeping track of him."

"I don't think he sleeps." It's the first time Marie can remember hearing Nygus speak. The other weapon's voice is surprisingly rich, low and smooth like syrup. "Ever."

"I've never caught him at it." Sid sounds ostensibly irritated, his eyebrows lowered in an imitation of frustration, but he is fighting a smile and Nygus has given up the battle entirely. "He's a pest, I can tell you that."

Stein shrugs off his coat and tosses it over the back of a chair before spinning said chair around to straddle it and join them at the table. "Are you still going to make Nygus a Death Weapon?"

Sid raises his hands palm-up in an exaggerated shrug and leans back in his own chair. "I don't know. It's the go-to goal, sure, and she's got the skill for sure."

It is not that Nygus touches Sid, or that she smiles or looks self-conscious, but the way she is looking at him darkens and there is something in her eyes that makes Marie look away and blush herself. Her eyes focus on Stein, whose gaze is flickering between Sid and Nygus with a faraway look in his eyes and the hint of a smile on his mouth that Marie is sure has nothing to do with the subject at hand. It is almost worse than the affection in Nygus's eyes, the implied intimacy that cuts Marie with unjustified jealousy.

Sid continues. "But it's not a requirement, you know, and we've just got other priorities right now with Black Star on our hands. We might get there eventually, but we're not worried about it."

Stein nods. "That's reasonable."

Sid clears his throat and glances at Nygus before he goes on. "Speaking of Death Weapons, did you hear that Kami and Spirit got married?"

Marie's head whips around to look at Stein before she realizes that that lacks a lot of subtlety and that she should be somewhat more restrained and jerks her gaze back to Nygus, but even in the glance she got Stein looks shockingly composed.

"Really?" His voice is even more controlled than his face, and Marie doesn't catch any sign that the restraint in his tone is forced. "That's great."

"It was a tiny ceremony," Sid offers while looking into his cup. "Just their immediate families. Did you know that Spirit's got a whole bunch of siblings?"

Marie is still trying to not look at Stein, but she can hear the smile in his voice when he answers. "One of them's a meister, isn't she?"

"Yep. She made her partner a death weapon before she graduated, too. I guess the skill runs in their family."

"Guess so." Stein turns the screw in his head until it clicks into place. "Is there any more coffee, Marie?"

"Oh, yeah!" Marie retreats to the kitchen again and locates another cup. By the time she returns the topic has shifted away from Spirit; she is relieved until she realizes where it has gone.

"She's got great potential," Stein is saying. For a moment Marie thinks he's talking about her, but then he accepts the cup she offers and continues. "She's having trouble finding a long-term partner, and I admit she's not particularly easy to work with, but she's incredibly motivated. If she could wield herself she would."

"Knowing Azusa she's probably tried," Nygus offers, the rich weight of her voice matching Stein's for deadpan.

"Can you work with her at all?" Sid asks.

"Sure. She doesn't like me much but she'll tolerate working together while we're on assignments." Stein glances at Marie. "She might actually get along well with you, Marie."

Marie nearly chokes on her tea. "What? Azusa *Yumi*? She doesn't get along with *anyone*, Stein."

"And you get along with *everyone*," Stein retorts. "It'd be interesting to see which wins out."

"It's got to be hard to stay at home while Stein goes out on assignment." Sid observes. He sounds offhand and is looking at Marie like his comment is incredibly casual, but Nygus is watching her intently and Stein turns to look at her and then Marie is the center of attention when a moment before she was barely in the conversation.

"Uh." She takes a sip of tea but that only draws the patient silence longer. "It's a little weird, yeah. I mean a meister goes out, his weapon goes with him, right?" She looks into the opaque liquid in her cup. It's easier to talk to her rippled reflection than to the three sets of eyes staring her down. "I just really wouldn't - if something happens while I'm not there it would be..."

She lacks the words to finish the sentence, but Nygus steps in over her. "Yeah."

Sid comes in immediately on her heels. "You're really strong to be able to handle that. I don't think I could in your position. It's just not the kind of thing I'm good at."

Stein doesn't say anything, but he reaches out to touch her shoulder. The contact shoots through Marie and locks her in place, somewhere between shock and delight, and when she manages to turn her head to look at him he is smiling *at* her as he never has before. It would be thrilling if it weren't so utterly platonic, if it didn't feel like the gentle condescension of a parent reassuring a child.

"I'll take care of myself," he says, and Marie almost manages to avoid watching his lips move when he talks. "Maybe we can try going out as a team sometime."

He is trying to help her. There is no way he can know how his touch makes her feel. It's good, Marie tells herself, that he isn't leading her on at all, that there is no way she can misinterpret his feelings or his intentions. So she makes herself smile and holds his gaze until he lets her go and looks away, and only then does she look back at the table and take a shaky breath to pull in the tears that are pressing against her eyes.


	17. Final

Kami can't recall being this nervous before a fight before. Even during her first assignment with Ashe, she was confident in her abilities, confident in her partner, sure they would come out ahead. Kami has *always* trusted herself above everything else. She has never had cause to doubt her own abilities. But fear has her in a frigid grip and she cannot shake it with all the rational arguments she can muster, and after five minutes of awkward silence between her and Spirit she tells him to transform just so she doesn't have to try to make conversation.

He speaks just once after, when she catches the scythe-handle and his voice can permeate into her mind directly. *Are you okay?* His voice is shaky with stress, but that is normal for Spirit. Usually Kami is the one to talk him down, to reassure him so he can smoothly match his wavelength to hers. Today there is only the distant cold seeping into her bones and new fear in the back of her head and she says "Yes" into the open air just for the comfort of her own voice.

Kami does not give up. Kami has never given up on anything she really wanted, and she has wanted to make a Death Weapon for years before she joined the Academy, years before she went on her first assignment, years before she ever met Spirit Albarn. She wants it even more now, wants to succeed in this final assignment with an agonizing determination that she has never felt so intensely before in her life. She will not have another chance, so she must succeed on this first attempt. It is simple, really, which is the only reason she is still moving forward. Fright can't cripple her with indecision when there is no decision to make at all.

There is the sound of birdsong behind Kami's shoulder. She stops dead, half-smiles, and speaks without turning. "You should know better than to taunt me in the city. Birds are rather uncommon in the middle of Prague."

When she turns the witch is directly behind her. She is smaller than Kami expected, smaller than the meister is used to, shaped like a human and smiling like a friendly stranger rather than the monster Kami knows her to be.

"Ah, well, I couldn't hide from you very long anyway." Her voice is high and trilling. When she moves, her clothes rustle like leaves and shift in a way that makes Spirit squeak in the back of Kami's head. She would hit him if he were in human form; instead she lets the weight of the weapon hit the ground with somewhat more force than necessary as the witch steps toward them. "And I wanted to see if you were *very* stupid or just *mostly* so."

The words are so friendly that Kami thinks for a moment she hasn't properly caught the meaning. While she is trying to review her recollection to make sure she is right, the witch lifts her hand and twists it through the air, as if she is about to pirouette into a dance routine.

Kami barely jerks away in time to dodge the jet of air that results. She doesn't *know* that it would be anything more than a gust of wind, but the sound it makes as it goes past her ear argues in favor of something far more damaging. The near-miss and her distraction recenter her focus with the energy of self-directed anger, and she raises Spirit off the ground again and widens her stance into a more stable position.

"Witch Vogelle," she states, and her voice is clear and cold and not shaking *at all* in spite of the flutter of her heartbeat in her throat, "You have committed crimes and sown destruction throughout this country. As representatives of the DWMA, we have come to take your soul."

The witch's laugh is just as high as her voice. "Did you practice that in front of a mirror? You're *adorable*."

Kami *doesn't* flare with rage at that. Spirit has reached out to her wavelength and she can feel their thoughts and patterns of breathing aligning and she is already as focused as she is going to be. There is no point in letting herself get angry. Instead she steps forward and calmly swings at the witch, now that her initial declaration is complete.

The witch pushes off the ground with the tips of her toes and lifts off as if gravity doesn't exist or as if she weighs much less than she appears to. The black scythe cuts through the air under her raised feet instead of her, and Kami is still trying to regain her balance from the missed hit when the next attack comes. She doesn't quite clear it this time; it clips her shoulder hard enough to shove her backwards, twisting her ankle under her and collapsing her to the ground hard enough that her breath goes.

*Kami!* Spirit yells in her head, but there is no time to reassure him. As long as he is focused enough to remain effective they will finish this fight first. Kami swings before fully rising to her feet, and the witch dodges again but this time the meister is prepared for the total lack of resistance, and her opponent's movement backward gives her the chance to get her feet and legs under her and shift the worst of the bruising impact out of her shoulders.

The witch is at a distance, head cocked to one side, unblinking eyes focused on Kami and Spirit together. The weight of the scythe in Kami's hands is a reminder that she *cannot* let this drag out and the desire in her head is a reminder that she needs to complete this assignment. So she steps in.

The witch doesn't move. She'll have plenty of time to dodge away while Kami is winding up for her swing; the weight of Spirit's scythe-form means that an enemy as light on her feet as this one is is no real danger even when Kami is well within attack range.

*Spirit.* Kami's voice sounds odd and echoey even in her own head, even to herself. *Resonate with me.*

She is reaching towards his wavelength already, exerting her mental strength as she always has to in order to Resonate, so she can feel the flicker of confusion, the sad nostalgia of his response as if it is coffee bitter at the back of her tongue. Then they slip into alignment and Kami can't distinguish her own thoughts from Spirit's anymore. Is it herself trying to repress a crucial piece of information so he doesn't see it, or him? Does he feel distantly like crying or are the tears cresting the edge of her own mental horizon? All the details are pouring through Kami's senses but there is no time to pull them apart, just the odd synchronicity of Resonance pooling her thoughts and feelings and Spirit's and the scythe in her hands going lighter, the weight shifting its balance even as the blade itself expands to curve around her body in a crescent-moon shape.

They have never used Witch Hunter in a battle before, but this seems the most applicable use of the power that Kami has ever encountered. Spirit can't maintain it very long; his wavelength rapidly shifts out of alignment as he loses focus, and she has trouble keeping her mind both on the motion of combat and the control in her head, but she has gotten single swings off before in practice, and that's all she needs here.

The witch is eyeing the silver-white arc with a raised eyebrow. "Cute. At least the DWMA hasn't started sending out *total* beginners. Looks as nice as your little declaration sounded." When she smiles, her teeth are sharp-edged and her eyes go dark with intent. All the girlish attractiveness of her wide eyes and careful smile evaporates and she looks like a hawk about to stoop on a mouse. "Have you ever tried to use it on an enemy before?"

When she comes at them it is too fast, much faster than Kami anticipated. There is a moment when she hesitates and that is too long, too long to give them a chance to dodge and the witch's hand is coming towards her so fast the air is screaming around it, and Kami brings the glowing scythe handle up in front of her face to take the hit.

The witch's hand hits, rebounds, and Spirit gasps in the back of Kami's head like all the wind has been knocked out of him. Their Resonance flickers and Kami seizes it, holds onto it with all the mental force she has ever brought to bear on anything. It feels like she is pinning Spirit down, locking him in place through sheer force of will so she can line her wavelength up with his. He flinches, relents, goes passive in the back of her head so she can drive their Resonance herself. The witch is still close, blinking at them in shock. Kami wants to relish that expression of horrified fear on her face, but her focus is going and she doesn't know what will happen when she loses it, and there is no time to do anything but swing. The glowing blade in Kami's hands curves in front of her with no resistance at all, and then it's on the far side of the witch.

Spirit snaps back to his normal scythe form as soon as he is on the other side of the target, and Kami stumbles forward with the increased weight and the rubber-band snap of the Resonance in her head. The witch is staring at them with her mouth open, and for a horrible moment Kami isn't sure they hit her at all. Then she looks down and *unravels*, like a sweater with a loose string, her body evaporating around the glowing purple soul at the center. Kami is looking at her face, so she sees the moment of terrified realization hit just before the witch is gone, sees her mouth open with a scream that never hits the air, and for the first time Kami feels a wave of nausea flood the back of her mouth.

Spirit transforms back to human form. He lands on his feet, but only maintains his balance for a moment before he collapses to the ground.

"Are you okay?" Kami asks. She can't pull her eyes away from the empty space where the witch stood, can't move her legs without risking falling as Spirit just has. Her voice is cold and far-off but at least she is speaking at all.

"Are you?" Spirit's tone is bleeding all the emotion hers lacks.

She doesn't answer any more than he did, just raises her hand to pluck the floating purple soul from the air in front of them. There is the suggestion of wings rising from the back of it, and of course the color is all wrong, but otherwise it looks like any other soul. She turns and holds it out towards Spirit.

"The last one." He is looking up at her with fear and worry in his eyes, but she is going to see this through before she does anything else. "It's yours. You'll be a Death Scythe."

Spirit's gaze lingers on her for a long moment before he looks at the soul in her hand. He looks terrified; she can see him swallow hard once, twice, before he slowly lifts his own arm to take the soul from her. When he brings it close to his face, the color illuminates a trickle of blood along his hairline and a discolored bruise rising along his jaw.

He looks up at her again. The fear slowly fades from his expression, vanishing under a layer of determination. When he brings the soul to his mouth and swallows, he holds her gaze. She can see his jaw tighten just after he swallows, as if he is fighting nausea; then his eyes go out-of-focus and he swings forward onto his hands and knees and coughs wetly. His shoulders spasm as he dry-heaves once and then his entire body convulses and bursts with light. Spirit's head comes up and he stares at her, his eyes glowing an eerie backlit blue from the light emanating from his body. When he opens his mouth to speak, his mouth looks like it is afire with sunlight, like he is spilling illumination out into the world. The light flares brighter, Spirit shuts his eyes and cringes, and then the light blinks out like a switch has been flipped and he snaps into weapon form.

Kami stays perfectly still for several seconds before approaching the scythe. Her hands are shaking when she reaches out to touch the handle, in spite of her best attempts to calm herself, and when she makes contact and Spirit transforms back she is so startled that she would scream if her throat didn't close up entirely around the sound. She *does* fall backward, and Spirit exhales slowly and then looks at her. He looks perfectly normal now; all the glowing light is gone, his features haven't changed, except the bruise is rising to the surface and his eyes are wide with shock now instead of fear or focus.

"Are you - are you okay?" Kami asks.

Spirit swallows before answering. "I - think so."

"Do you feel any different?"

He shifts his shoulders like he's working a knot out. "Maybe? I did, just now, but now I just feel kind of sore." He laughs. "A little anticlimatic, I guess."

Kami leans forward and almost doesn't hesitate before she rests her fingers against Spirit's shoulder. "More than enough for me. Now you'll be a Death Scythe and a father."

Spirit smiles, first. Then confusion hits, then suspicion, then confirmation, each sweeping over his face like clouds.

"*What*?"

Kami is smiling, she can't repress the grin even though she is half-dreading Spirit's reaction. "I'm pregnant."

"You - you're pregnant? Right now?" Awareness hits. "You *fought a witch* while *pregnant*?"

Kami lifts her chin and summons all the meister-dominance she's ever had. "I wanted to finish the job. And we were so close."

"What if something had *happened*?"

"Something did. We won." Spirit is spluttering but Kami talks over him. "It's too late to worry about it now. Everything is fine, I'm fine, you're fine, and now you're a Death Scythe properly."

Spirit is still continuing, wordless whimpers and fluttering hands, and finally Kami grabs his shoulders and pulls him in to cover his mouth with hers. That shuts him up, eventually, and she takes the moment to relish her victory - over luck, over her own timeline, over her goal for the last six years - before they have to report back to Lord Death.


	18. Perception

The classroom is filled with the low buzz of dozens of voices. There is usually a murmur of sound before class starts; Marie finds it slightly soothing as comforting white noise, or at least she has in the past. But in the past the voices have all been whispering about different subjects, canceling the meaning behind the words with too much variety, and now all or at least most of them are on the same topic and she can pick out the common thread among them.

"They say he's going to be the greatest meister in Academy history."

"He's partnering with multiple weapons, any type, it doesn't matter."

"Lord Death will have him try dual-wielding weapons soon."

"Imagine the Death Weapon he could make if he wanted."

It is bad enough that Stein is going on three times as many missions as she is, that he is wielding any weapon Lord Death assigns to him with as much skill as he does her, that she has spent evening after evening and long lonely weekends by herself in his laboratory while he hones his skills with other weapons and other teams. Hearing about his skill second-hand just makes everything worse, and she know she shouldn't be jealous but she *is*. She has come to class later and later, trying to slip in the door just ahead of the professor, but she can't quite avoid the whispers entirely and there are always a few minutes of mingled frustration and guilt at her own reaction to suffer through before class starts. Now that Stein is going to try dual-wielding multiple weapons the talk is spilling out into the hallways too, and Marie vacillates between avoiding the Academy as much as possible and tolerating the rumors because at least she's not alone at school.

No one has thought of her position, which is a relief. The widespread pity after losing Roger has only just faded; she is absolutely sure she would just stop attending class at all if she had to face those sympathetic strangers again. They mean well, of course, but however sincere the emotion it is impossible to properly open up to an unknown person, so it turns into a constant battle, concerned classmates asking if she's alright and her forcing a smile and lying because she can't tell them that she is shattered inside, that her world will never be quite as bright or whole as it was before.

Not that this is anything like that bad, of course, but it makes it easier that her classmates either don't think about Stein's current partner or don't realize that it might be hard for her or perhaps don't even realize he *has* an official partner.

Marie leans back in her chair and carefully lies her hands flat on the desk in front of her. That last was nothing but irrational self-deprecation; she recognizes the bitter sound of the words even in the quiet of her own head. There is no place for that and it is doing Stein and her classmates a disservice to let herself think it.

Even as she thinks it, the girl on her left clears her throat and begins to speak without looking at her, so it takes Marie a moment to realize the words are directed towards her.

"You're Stein's partner, aren't you?"

The pause before she responds is too long and Marie is stumbling over too many words for a simple affirmation by the time she manages to speak. "Yeah, yes, I am, I'm his partner."

The girl looks up at her and her glasses catch the overhead light in a way that reminds Marie unavoidably of her partner, even though otherwise the two look nothing alike. "He's not particularly considerate. It's not you, though. He's that way with everyone."

Marie stares at the girl for several drawn-out seconds before she can think of anything to say. "Thanks?" It comes out as a question because she's not sure if she's actually grateful for this information, but the miserable stiffness of her facade isn't rising as a defense, like the other girl has managed to calmly step over the awkward distance of acquaintances into the sharp-edged honesty of friends.

"You looked like you needed some more information." The girls turns back to the book open in front of her. "I don't know who else would think to give it to you."

There is a long pause while Marie debates the relative merits of continuing this conversation or letting it quietly fade into an isolated oddity.

"I'm Marie," she finally manages. She starts to offer her hand but thinks better of it when the other girl tips her head to look at her again. The reflection is absent this time, but her gaze is piercing and worse than the distance of the glasses; Marie feels like she is being weighed, measured, and catalogued by the girl's dark blue eyes.

"Azusa Yumi," she finally says, and then offers her own hand so Marie has to fumble to take it. Her hands are smaller than Marie's, her fingers close around Marie's hand with precisely the right amount of pressure, and then she is letting her go so quickly Marie is unsure if she managed to return the grip at all. "I'm a weapon like you." She looks away so she is facing towards the front of the classroom when she continues. "I worked with Stein on his first assignment without you."

"Oh." There doesn't seem much else that Marie can say to that. After a moment she adds, more out of politeness than anything else, "What kind of a weapon are you?"

Azusa smiles into the distance. It is not a smile for sharing, like Stein's, but it is deliberately separate rather than unconsciously so. "I'm a crossbow. He had to use a totally different fighting style with me than with you, or than he used with his original scythe-partner, I assume. It gave him a bit of trouble."

She sounds *amused*, like she is savoring the memory of Stein's discomfort, and Marie's next words are coming out before she realizes what she is planning to say. "You don't like him."

Azusa looks at her but doesn't speak. Marie's brain catches up with her mouth and she claps a hand to her mouth before trying to talk over her blurt. "I mean, you don't seem infatuated with him like the rest of the students -"

"Like you."

Marie's words die in her throat and her body locks in place with the cold fright of exposure. She hasn't told *anyone* that, she has only just met this girl, how could she...

Azusa shoves her glasses up the bridge of her nose and turns away again. When she speaks there is a flicker of apology in her tone. "He doesn't know. I'm good at reading people. Stein's not."

Marie has no idea what to make of this but it is a comfort, and the irrational fear is dissipating in the utter lack of emotional response Azusa is showing on the subject and the hint of reassurance the other girl offered.

The professor comes in before Marie can think of anything to say or even decide if she wants to say anything is response at all, and she focuses on the lecture as best she can with only a tiny amount of herself left over to be perplexed by the pre-class conversation. That corner spends the whole of class coming to a conclusion, however, so when they are dismissed Marie turns back towards Azusa instead of fleeing from the rising voices as she usually does.

"Was he hard to partner with?"

Azusa doesn't ask for clarification and doesn't look at Marie, but she does answer as she carefully stacks her books and notepaper and slides them into her bag. "No. He's not good at reading people but he's *very* good at adjusting his soul wavelength." The words are hard-edged with well-controlled frustration. This is an admission Azusa does not want to make. "I think he could partner with anyone if he tried. I didn't have to do anything at all."

That is entirely consistent with Marie's own experience. She is relieved that it is not just her, relieved that Stein isn't relying on his occasional partners more than he relies on her, but it makes her sad too and she cannot tell if she is sad for herself or for Stein.

When Azusa turns to leave Marie trails behind her, talking faster in an failed attempt to keep the conversation normal and unforced. "He's got a lot of talent for sure. Why don't you like him? I mean I live with him and I can see how that would get draining, it's a little hard to put up with, but you've not ever been assigned as his full-time partner."

"He's a sadistic psychopath," Azusa says, as calmly as if she is saying that Stein is nearsighted. "He needs someone to keep him under control and in the absence of a strong-willed partner he is a danger to himself and to everyone around him."

Marie's temper flares hot in her chest and she increases her pace so she can draw level with the other girl. "Are you calling me weak-willed?"

"Of course not. You could be a great partner to him if you weren't in love with him." And that is so utterly true that Marie can't deny it. It feels like Azusa has reached through her own self-deceptions and internal stories with a single blow and the truth of her statement is so true that it casts Marie's whole world in a different light.

"I -" Marie starts.

"You can't help it, of course." Azusa pauses at the intersection of two corridors. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She is walking away before Marie can think of a response. Marie waits until the other girl is well out of earshot before she heaves a sigh and rubs a hand over her face.

"Why can't anyone at this school be *normal*?" she moans.


	19. Domesticity

"Kami."

Kami groans and rolls over, keeping her eyes forcibly shut. "Just another couple minutes, Spirit."

"I have to go to the Death Room, Kami." There is mostly apology and a hint of panic in Spirit's voice. "Lord Death is *waiting* for me and I don't want to be late."

Kami groans, louder this time, but she opens her eyes and pushes herself up in bed. "What time is it? Is Maka asleep?"

"Five, and no, that's why I'm waking you up."

When Kami blinks her eyes into awareness, Spirit is standing next to their bed, dressed in a shirt that matches her eyes, carefully pressed slacks, his brand-new custom-made tie, and a coat on which the baby in his arms is currently drooling.

She wants to roll her eyes but Spirit holding their daughter is always far too cute for her to be even irked at his lack of foresight, so she smiles instead and holds her arms out for Maka. "You'll have to change your coat now."

Spirit carefully transfers the baby, still heavy-headed with infant weakness, to her mother's waiting arms and watches the two of them with an utterly ridiculous and utterly heartwarming expression before he looks down at his front. He yelps loudly enough that Kami flinches and bolts out of the room.

"I told you not to hold her when you're dressed for work!" Kami calls after him, settling the weight of the baby into the crook of her arm. Maka burbles against her and promptly begins drooling on Kami's clothes instead of Spirit's.

"I know, I know." Spirit's voice echoes down the narrow hall of their apartment. The tone of frantic affection is becoming a constant in his throat. "But she wanted to be held and I couldn't refuse her."

Kami refrains from pointing out that Maka still has quite a ways to go before she can even move of her own free will, much less speak, and rationally there is no way for Spirit to *know* what she wanted to that level of detail. Besides, the baby's eyes are blinking shut and she appears to be well on her way to sleep again now that Kami is holding her, so maybe he was right on some level.

When Spirit comes back in, pulling a fresh coat straight over his shoulders, he looks at Maka first and modulates his tone into a pseudo-whisper accordingly. "And I don't get to see anything like enough of her while I'm working with Lord Death. I didn't wake her up, at least."

That was the first and only rule Kami has had to insist upon with regard to the baby. Spirit doesn't seem to need or want sleep when there is a child to adore, and she is happy to let him dote while she drops into properly deep sleep for a few hours, but the first couple of days he couldn't keep his hands off Maka, even when their daughter had dropped into rare and precious sleep, which made both girls rather irritable.

Kami turns her face up in expectation of a kiss before Spirit even leans in to press his lips against hers. He turns to Maka, now apparently deeply asleep, and carefully brushes his hand through the downy hair just above her head before very gently kissing her forehead.

"You two be good for Papa, okay?" he says, eyes flicking back and forth between them.

"We will," Kami promises for both of them.

Spirit checks his watch and flinches. "Okay, I'm going. Actually going." He pivots and heads for the front door.

Kami tracks the sound of his footsteps down the hallway, waiting for the inevitable pause, then the sound coming back towards the bedroom. Spirit comes back in, kisses both of them once more, first Maka and then Kami this time, and leaves without saying anything. This time he actually makes it out the front door successfully.

When several minutes have passed without a third return, Kami tips her head back against the pillows behind her and shuts her eyes. She has become very good at the motherly drowse over the last month, minimal rest while still remaining entirely alert and able to leap into action at the tiniest whimper from Maka. Shutting her eyes frees her mind from boredom and stress alike, although it doesn't really let her do anything like sleep; in the absence of light behind her eyelids she can appreciate the charm of the last few months while happily avoiding thinking about the ridiculous increase in stress even the calmest baby causes.

Spirit - he is called Death Scythe, now, his new name bestowed upon him along with his new position at the DWMA, but Kami can't quite manage the implied formality of the new title in her head - has been doing more than enough worrying for the both of them, has been since he found out Kami was pregnant. Kami has to admit that he was right to be panicked, given her decision to complete him as a Death Weapon while she was carrying Maka, but she can't admit that she would do anything different if she had the option again. The very idea of handing Spirit off to another meister for the final soul collection is galling in itself, and waiting or watching while he participated in a dangerous fight without her is unbearable even in the hypothetical.

In the calm of her current half-asleep state, Kami can admit that her other reason is much more selfish that that. She told herself that she wanted Spirit to be a Death Scythe, that the Academy shouldn't have to lose his skill during the possible months it would take to find a meister compatible with the weapon and for them to learn to work together. But it wouldn't have taken months. It could have been a matter of days. Because of course there is at least one meister at the Academy who is known to be compatible with Spirit, the meister who is now the rising star of their class. Stein could have taken Spirit in for the final witch soul, and from the rumors about Stein's talent Spirit would probably have been safer with him than with anyone else, Kami included.

Kami sighs before she realizes she is about to. The thought of the other meister doesn't burn the way it used to; the angry hurt has dulled with time and avoidance until the sense of injury on Spirit's behalf has scabbed over and doesn't really hurt any more, nothing beyond the lingering memory of pain. There is a flicker of something else now, the bitter dregs of jealousy at the back of her mind that have nothing to do with Spirit and none of the buffer that vicarious anger has. It is hard to hear the name she has avoided for years on everyone's lips, hard to hear how *successful* and *talented* Stein is when she doesn't even officially have a weapon anymore and certainly can't go out on assignments as a meister herself.

Maka chooses this moment to coo wetly. She does everything wetly, not yet having progressed past the somewhat gelatinous phase of baby, but either Kami's newfound maternal instinct or the hardwired love of mothers for their children overlooks this disadvantage entirely and pulls her out of her reflections so all her attention can be focused on Maka.

Her daughter - Spirit's daughter - *their* daughter - never fails to distract her from the worst of her internal downward spirals. Spirit has forgotten what gravity is like since Maka was born; even when he is panicking about her safety or her health it is a frenetic, high-energy panic, and he bounces back into bubbling delight as soon as whatever imaginary crisis he has invented is proven to be imaginary. Kami feels like she might be the current holder of all the sanity between them, but as long as she can point Spirit in the right direction his energy is a boon to her, and she always gets several hours of peace while he is gone at his Death weapon crash-course meetings with Lord Death and the other current Death Weapons. The peace is not due to Maka being a particularly quiet baby, though she's not a problem either. Kami is fairly certain that Maka is utterly normal, her maternal insistence upon *her* baby's uniqueness notwithstanding. But the generic, toothless baby-smile Maka graces Kami with makes up for the crying for reasons Kami doesn't understand, and she can't wait for the baby-blue of Maka's eyes to deepen into adult blue or green or something entirely different, and the idea that she and Spirit have *created* an actual *living thing* is so mind-boggling that Spirit's return always surprises her with how early it seems to come.


	20. Sharing

Marie is jealous.

It is an absurd reaction to have. She is *so tired* of waiting at home while Stein improves himself and collects souls and gains experience that she was willing to do almost anything to be sent on assignments with him. In the general sense this sounded like the perfect solution: team up with a third student so Stein can continue practicing his dual-wielding process while she finally gets back out in the field. Even up until the moment they met up to head out it seemed ideal, and even now Marie can't tell herself she'd rather not be here. Still, it is hard to stay in human form and to trail behind Stein and the crossbow in his hands like a puppy knowing that they will get the first attack on the enemy, that she may not be needed at all.

It makes sense, of course. Azusa's weapon form is excellent for long-distance sniping and almost entirely useless in close-quarters combat, while Marie is devastating up close but can't effect any damage until Stein is well within arm's reach. Marie's just never watched Stein attack with another weapon before, and the part of her suffering from ridiculous infatuation is growling in frustration. His movements are perfectly fluid, like the bow is an extension of his regular body, and the possibility that he might look that *right* with her as well is only minimal comfort.

Marie stays a handful of steps behind the meister, so when he drops low to the ground she is going to her knees before he has to signal her to do so. She doesn't need to see what's going on, not really, but she still sidles her way forward to peer over the edge of the ridge they have been climbing in imitation of Stein's position.

He is watching the woods below them so intently that he doesn't appear to be blinking. When Marie tries to see what he's looking at she can't see anything but the shadows and the trees, but Stein is raising the crossbow sights, slowly to avoid sudden movements, and she can see the tension of anticipation settle into his shoulders and arms. He looks utterly calm and utterly controlled, like he might explode into action at any moment but until then he's not going to worry about it. He's been looking like that more and more recently, but it's not been anything like as dramatic as the current effect.

When he does finally blink, the motion is drawn-out, and when he opens his eyes again Marie can *see* him sink into position, brace himself against the ground and brace the crossbow against his shoulder. There is no warning before he pulls the trigger; it is all a single motion, the blink, the shift, the pull. Marie is looking the wrong direction when the shot is fired, so she sees the ricochet of the weapon into Stein's shoulder instead of the explosion itself.

She scrambles to her feet in imitation of Stein as he pushes himself upright, lowering Azusa for a moment to stare at the darkness below them. Then there is a roar in the shadows and he smiles as he brings the sights up again.

"One more shot," he declares, and Marie's jealousy vanishes under the wave of adrenaline. It's like waiting for an alarm to go off; not nerves exactly, but the tight pull of tense expectation in the seconds before her cue.

She can see something down below them now, the trees shifting more violently than the wind alone could manage, the sound of a large unknown crashing through underbrush and smaller branches to come at them. It is approaching faster than she expected, even allowing for the target's larger size, but Stein still looks perfectly calm and unconcerned as he lines up his next shot. Marie sees it this time, a blue-white burst from the muzzle of the crossbow, and before the target has reacted to the fresh assault Stein is lowering the weapon in his hands, abandoning Azusa to the force of gravity before she's even done transforming, reaching for Marie.

Marie isn't quite prepared for the hand-off, but neither is Azusa. The other girl completes her transformation but hits the ground on her knees instead of her feet, and her face is taut with irritation as she lands. That is all Marie has time to see before she transforms herself, a beat late for the transfer to be perfectly in sync, but Stein catches the handle of her weapon-form as soon as her sight flashes white and takes them both over the edge of the ridge. His wavelength is aligning itself as soon as his fingers come into contact with her; Marie isn't sure how Stein managed to transition from Azusa's to hers so quickly, or if it required a transition at all. It is possible he could wield them simultaneously, were it not for the restrictions of their dissimilar weapon forms; other students have done it in the past, and at this point Marie isn't sure Stein *can't* do things as much as that he hasn't *tried* to succeed at them yet.

Azusa's range is impressive, even for a long-distance weapon as she is; Stein is sprinting forward for what feels like a very long time before they come within sight of the target. It is out of place in the dense forest around them, looking like it is held together by harnesses and metal plates and pure rage. It has multiple rows of teeth when it hisses at them, and Marie is abundantly grateful that she can't smell its breath in her current form.

Stein is unfazed as usual. He steps in towards the spitting monster, not bothering to dodge an attack that rips through his sleeve and leaves dual trails of red blood across his forearm.

*Stein!* Marie admonishes. She can feel him grin more than she can see it, feel the mental condescension in his words more than he intends to convey it.

"Not worth dodging." He doesn't have to speak out loud, but the words sound like a taunt and the Kishin egg steadies itself and hisses in response. Marie can see the monster bleeding sluggishly through Stein's half-borrowed eyesight; a wound on its shoulder oozes gently and its right eye socket is swollen shut, mirroring her own half-blindness.

*Stay focused* Stein's mental voice chides, and Marie drops her internal consideration of her self-image as he swings her at the Kishin egg in front of them. With her added strength Stein can hit hard enough to knock the enemy sideways even though it has hundreds of pounds of weight advantage; its claws sink into the ground and rake symmetrical patterns in the fallen leaves and soft dirt, but it still slams into a tree hard enough to crack the trunk.

If it was angry before the Kishin egg is *furious* now. It charges at them before it is fully back on its feet, starting from its fallen position and rising to full height as it advances. Stein stays still, watching it approach until Marie is *sure* he must attack or be trampled, waiting even then for another second so Marie's mind is awash in self-preservation and panic before his left hand shoves forward into contact with the Kishin egg.

"Soul Force," he whispers into the air. There is the usual flicker of guilt at the back of Stein's mind, still-unexplained but growing fainter with every use of the power, and then his right hand comes swinging towards the dazed monster as if he intends to give it a black eye. That is the fist clenched around Marie, though, and when it connects there is a spray of blood over Marie's weapon-form and Stein's wrist and the monster wails in instinctive agony as its sight goes with its remaining eye.

"Better." Stein withdraws his hand and steps back out of reach of the Kishin egg's flailing arms. "I meant to get both eyes with Azusa but it was difficult to hit it while it was running."

Marie makes a non-commital sound so he knows she heard his explanation but she doesn't have to decide whether to laugh or whimper that he considers missing a target the size of her fist on a moving object at several hundred feet worth explaining in the first place.

Stein takes two steps backward, clearing a few feet of space between them and the Kishin egg, then accelerates forward, his toes digging hard into the ground in a sprinter's stance so he is at full speed by the time he kicks off towards the monster in front of them. Being off the ground doesn't appear to phase him; he arches his back and twists in midair like a cat, so when he swings the weight of the hammer in his hand it crunches through the Kishin egg's skull with the momentum of his movement as well as the power of the hammer itself behind it. The sound is horrible; it would be nauseating were this Marie's first combat. Luckily she has become very good at pushing away some of the memories she picks up during assignments, and this is locked down at the back of her head almost before it happens.

The Kishin egg goes limp after their last hit, but Marie still waits for Stein to straighten and for his fingers to release her weapon's handle before she transforms. Even a few seconds of additional contact is *something*.

"Good job." The praise is warmer than his usual tone and sounds sincere. It would mean more if Stein sounded less like a professor complimenting a student, but it is still enough to send a spark of warm pride along Marie's spine. Then Stein's business tone is back, and he is turning back the way they came. "The soul is yours; the next time we go out with Azusa it'll be her turn, but it's been a while since we collected one for you." He starts to stride back towards the ridge, so Marie seizes the soul and heads after him at a half-run, not pausing to swallow the red orb until she has caught up to him and is pacing just behind his shoulder.

Azusa is on her feet when they finish scaling the ridge. It takes significantly longer to go back up than it did to come down, but she is standing and scanning the horizon as if they are actually in a combat situation where there is a need for sentries instead of in the middle of a now-empty forest.

"Good work," she intones, and Marie doesn't bother to avoid rolling her eyes this time. Stein's patronizing she can tolerate, but the tone is slightly silly coming from someone three years younger than she is. "We should head back to Death City."

It is obviously the next step, but Azusa's tone implies that without her guidance Marie and Stein might wander, lost and hopeless, for years before returning to where they should be. Neither of them protests out loud, though; Marie even waits to smirk until Azusa's back is turned.

"I saw that," the younger girl snaps. Stein doesn't blink, doesn't smile, doesn't react at all, but Marie can see the edges of his mouth tighten with a repressed smile in response although he looks stoic. The idea is enough to make her smile to herself the whole way back to the city.


	21. Static

"I miss you two so much."

Spirit's voice is colored with static over the phone line and Kami is distracted by Maka's toddling movements around what is being to seem a very dangerous house in her newly maternal eyes, but the tone of his words makes her smile even though she's not paying a lot of attention to the meaning.

"We miss you too," she manages before she makes a grab for the back of Maka's dress. Their daughter burbles and continues trying to walk, succeeding only at churning in place while Kami holds her still by the makeshift leash. "You should see Maka, she is getting into all kinds of trouble."

"How is my little angel?" Spirit's voice drops into his special Maka-register, sacchrine-sweet ever over the distance of the phone.

"Troublesome." Kami gently tugs Maka backward and lifts her off the floor one-armed. She has gotten much better at maneuvering a squirming toddler as Maka has become more mobile and these one-handed interactions while on the phone have become more common. "Can you say hi to papa, Maka?"

Maka reaches for the phone and Kami surrenders it. It is hardly worth holding on to at the moment; at the indication of Maka's presence Spirit descended into an unintelligible combination of baby-talk and wordless affection. Maka usually can make more sense of it than Kami can; in this case she listens with an expression of precocious seriousness before grinning like sunshine. Maka's eyes have settled into a mirror of Kami's own, and her hair is coming in white-blond for now, at least, but that smile is all Spirit.

"Papa!" she enunciates carefully, and Spirit's chirp of delight is so loud that Kami can hear it even at her distance from the speaker. Maka listens for a few seconds longer, her expression serious in spite of the smile now affixed to her face, then hands the phone back to Kami with the careful focus of a child not yet very good with her finger dexterity. Kami sets her back on the floor and returns to the conversation.

Spirit is in full swing, rambling about Maka's perfection along the grooves of conversation worn soft and smooth with repetition. Kami can pick up in the middle without missing out on any real information.

"- she's so *smart*, did you hear how clearly she spoke? I wish I could be there all the time, there's not enough hours in the day for me to spend with her, and then to be away so often..."

"I know." Kami smiles. "We miss you too. Do you know when you'll be back yet?"

That brings Spirit down to a more functional level of conversation, as she intended it to. "It looks like tomorrow. We've got one more possible target Lord Death is worried about while we're here, but we should be able to track that one down tonight once the sun sets. We're making better time than he expected."

"That's great. I can't wait to have you back. Maka's got more energy than I do most of the time, and I know she'd love to spend some time with you while I spend some time asleep."

Spirit laughs. The advantage to his ever-increasing overseas trips with Lord Death is that his absence makes the things about him Kami loves most shine brighter, and his laugh is one of the few she can appreciate over the phone without having him physically present.

"I'll make sure it happens. I don't want Maka to forget what I look like."

"That's unlikely. I think her memory's a little longer than three days, Spirit."

"That's Death Scythe, thank you very much!" Spirit attempts a tone of offended pride, but Kami starts laughing at the incongruity before he gets halfway through, and he barely finishes the sentence before joining her.

There is a pause of almost-awkward silence before Spirit speaks again. All the father-sweet is gone from his voice and his tone is softer, like he's afraid Maka will overhear even with the protection of the phone. "How are you doing, really?"

Kami opens her mouth to declare that she is fine, that everything is great, that there are no problems and nothing for Spirit to worry about. Then she closes it, glances at where Maka is quietly (for once) amusing herself in a corner of the living room, and imitates Spirit's lower volume.

"It's not perfect. I don't have anything to do but take care of Maka, and that's too much and not enough at the same time, you know?" Spirit is so quiet Kami thinks he might have moved the receiver away from his mouth so as not to interrupt. She continues, speaking slowly so she doesn't say something she doesn't mean. "I miss you. A lot. Maka is just happy to hear from you and I know you want to be here too, and I know Lord Death needs you right now, but I really wish there was someone else he could take sometimes."

"I know." Spirit's voice is so soft now that Kami can only barely hear the words tinged with guilt and apology in equal parts. "There are some promising candidates at the Academy, but right now it's just me for most of the issues that come up."

"Don't be sorry," Kami offers. "It's not your *fault* that you're the best Death Scythe there is." Spirit laughs, but it is abbreviated into a token response rather than actual amusement.

"It's be okay," she continues. "There'll be some more graduates to help soon. Besides, you'll be home tomorrow. By the time Lord Death needs you again I'll be ready to steal Maka back all to myself again!"

"You'll have to take me down to get her back!" Spirit rallies, and Kami knows that she has recovered his mood from the downward slope it was following.

"Please," she deadpans. "I'm the one who *made* you a Death Scythe, *Spirit*. I've got the skills to take you down even if I *am* a little rusty."

This time when Spirit laughs it is sincere and warm, and Kami is still smiling when they hang up.


	22. Comfort

Marie expected Azusa's apartment to be cold and clinical, like a smaller copy of the laboratory where Marie spends most of her time. Azusa and Stein are similarly distant and similarly awkward and what that says about Marie is a worrying question, but Marie has been grouping them together in her head and fully expects Azusa's apartment to reflect this connection.

It is definitely smaller than the laboratory, and just as carefully neat as the other weapon's notes and clothes, but it smells like bread and flowers, and while the chairs all match and sit at perfect right angles to each other, they look cozy and feel like a hug when Marie carefully settles into one.

By rights Azusa should look out of place in the comfortable surroundings, but she doesn't soften her crisp stride as she heads down the hallway and that matches too, somehow. It's as if the environment shapes itself around the weapon and Azusa goes slightly softer in comparison, too.

"Do you want some tea?" Azusa asks from around the corner, and when she comes back out of the bedroom her bag is gone and she looks slightly more relaxed. The shine is off her glasses, the arch of her back is less firmly in place, and his chin has come down from its usual high tilt. She looks like a person rather than a manager; for the first time, Marie can see the other girl's youth in the lingering softness across her cheekbones and mouth and chin.

"That would be great," she answers, and while Azusa rounds the corner to the attached kitchen space Marie lets her eyes shut and sinks into the relaxation she didn't expect to find here. The pure white light is warm on her face and the chair is softer than anything at the lab or at school, and the surprise of the *comfort* is enough to break apart the brittle shyness of visiting an acquaintance.

Not that they're necessary acquaintances anymore, Marie realizes. She has never seen Azusa speaking to anyone else in their class other than to order the other students around. She is probably the closest thing the other girl has to a friend, given the last several weeks of semi-casual conversation they have had since their joint assignment with Stein.

It is not until Azusa comes in with two cups perfectly balanced on saucers and offers one to Marie without asking if she wants sugar that she realizes that Azusa is the closest friend *she* has, too.

The realization is oddly embarrassing in a way that stepping inside the personal space of Azusa' apartment failed to be. Marie feels herself turning red and tips her chin down towards the cup so her long hair falls in front of her face and the rising steam offers her an excuse for her warming skin.

Azusa takes a sip from her own cup. The heat condenses against her glasses so her eyes disappear behind them, and she huffs a sigh and takes them off to dry them on her shirt. Without the glasses her eyes are visibly blue, the color so dark that Marie has always assumed they were black before today. The distraction clears her blush and the realization makes her smile.

When Azusa gets her glasses back on, she peers at Marie, sets her teacup down on the table so carefully it doesn't even clink, and leans back in her chair. "I thought you were having a bad day. Are you feeling better?"

Bringing up the subject of her mood has exactly the opposite effect it probably should on Marie. She slumps back in her chair and sighs. "Well. Briefly. I forgot."

"This really shouldn't be something that upsets you," Azusa points out with irritating rationality. "Stein getting promoted to second-star status is a sign of his skill, and he's *your* partner. He got there at least partially because of his work with you."

"I know." Marie can hear her voice twisting into sulky petulance but she can't stop the whine that creeps into her throat. "He barely works with me, though, and now he's a two-star meister and I'm not even a Death Weapon yet."

Azusa pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose and resumes the chin tilt that lets her maintain the shine of reflection on them. When she speaks, her voice has dropped into the dry lecturer range that she uses with everyone else in their class.

"You know he doesn't return your feelings. As a partner he's incredibly effective and making a deliberate effort to take you as one of his weapons on every assignment, which is the most you'll ever get out of him. He doesn't feel deep attachment for *anyone*. It's not something of which he's capable. Can't you let it go?"

Marie looks down into the pale golden-brown liquid in her teacup. Her hands are shaking, very slightly, and she sets the saucer against her knees to steady it while she tries to find the words to explain herself. It's not uncommon for Azusa to make her feel like she's on trial, like she needs to defend her position or her actions, but it is strangely satisfying to step through her internalized angst, to pull it out into the open, like she is acknowledging the pain of a long-ignored injury or stretching out a cramped muscle.

"I can't," she says careful, and the words are clear even through the blend of painful rejection and desire that is clogging her throat. "I've tried but I can't just *stop*, that's not really how this works. I don't have any more control over this than he does." Her voice is stabilizing. The words feel *right* as she says them, like she is explaining a fact instead of making an excuse. She glances up through her hair and half-smiles. "It would be easier if I could. Maybe I'd be more like you."

Azusa's chin drops down and she blinks, the first time Marie can remember ever seeing the other girl visibly react. She doesn't smile in return - Azusa never smiles that Marie has ever seen - but her voice is faintly softer, the difference between a scalpel and a kitchen knife, when she answers.

"Jealousy doesn't solve anything. Be happy for him. He's achieving his potential, and he's taking you with him. You'll be one of the best Death Weapons once you graduate."

Marie laughs. "I'm not even sure I want to *be* a Death Weapon. All those diplomatic duties and responsibilities? I just wanted to have a normal life, you know."

"No." Azusa's response is so terse that it would be offensive were it not for Marie's experience with Stein and recent interactions with the other girl; neither of them has entirely mastered politeness. "I've wanted to be a Death Weapon ever since I knew I could be."

"Ah. Well. It would just be nice to have a home, and a husband, and kids. It's all I've really ever wanted."

"Kids." Azusa's tone makes it abundantly clear what she thinks of the idea of procreation. It is enough to make Marie laugh again.

"I don't know how on earth we ever have any interactions, Azusa." The tea is hot and very sweet when she takes a sip; Marie knows that Azusa's will be unsweetened but acidic with a splash of lemon juice. It is as good evidence as any for friendship.

"I have no explanation for it either," Azusa offers. Marie giggles, and Azusa does not smile but her lips tighten as if she is repressing the reaction, and that has become enough for Marie to read as pleasure. The knots of tension that living with Stein creates settle into just a sore memory, and when she shuts her eyes again there is nothing to disturb her comfort, however brief it may be.


	23. Responsibility

Kami awakes with the panicked fright of having forgotten something critically important. She jerks straight up in bed, breathing hard with barely-contained fear, her mind frantically scrabbling for context. The sheets beside her are in disarray, her alarm is shut off, her limbs still lethargic with half-sleep. It's not until she sees the black coat across the foot of the bed that she remembers and collapses back to the mattress with a sigh.

It is some time later when she gets up for good and pads out to the living room. Spirit is stretched out on the couch that doesn't remember the shape of his body anymore, his formal Death Scythe uniform given up for a T-shirt and jeans. His hair has gotten long again since the last time she nagged him to cut it; it's still pulled back into the messy ponytail she twisted it into when he came home last night, a few shorter strands escaping to brush against his forehead. He glances up at her briefly and smiles before looking back to where Maka's chubby finger is tracing words.

"Do you know what that says, sweetie?" His voice still retains the high register that he always uses in Maka's hearing, but he has become somewhat more coherent since their daughter developed a better grasp of words.

"Sky," she enunciates, carefully forming the syllable on her tongue, eyes fixed in concentration on the book as Spirit's are fixed on her.

"Good job. That's my girl!"

Kami steps past them, brushing her fingers against Spirit's hair as she goes by, and into the kitchen where she has a camera perpetually collecting pictures of Maka's growth. At first it was on Spirit's behalf, constant documentation of Maka's every accomplishment and action that never managed to satisfy his desire for details. Recently Kami finds herself wanting evidence of Spirit's presence too, in the rare occasions when he is home and they feel like a family again, however briefly those moments last.

She comes back into the living room and snaps a picture before either her husband or her daughter look up at her. The click of the camera going off pulls Spirit's attention up to her, but he just flashes her the sparkling smile that sends a jolt of painful affection through her before looking back down at the words Maka is struggling through. He's put her hair in pigtails, Kami realizes; Maka barely has enough hair for the elastic to hold steady, but the similarity in their hairstyles makes them look like father and daughter in spite of the difference in their hair color.

The kitchen is oddly quiet and easy to maneuver with Maka occupied with her book and Spirit occupied with Maka. For a few minutes Kami amuses herself with pretending she is at the Academy again, making coffee before attempting to rouse Ashe from her night-owl-deep sleep, enjoying the quiet of the morning before she interacts with other people. She has forgotten how nice it is to be alone for a few minutes, and how lonely it is. After a minute she takes her still-too-hot-to-drink coffee cup and goes out to perch on the back of the couch where she can hear Maka's voice and Spirit's laugh and look at them to her heart's content.

It is surreal to have Spirit back in the house. Lord Death started taking him on assignments as soon as he became a Death Scythe, frequently enough that a full week at home was unusual. At some point, Spirit attended an official function as Lord Death's new Death Weapon, and it came out that Kami's husband has an inherent knack for political maneuvering and personable charm. Kami is convinced this is a fluke, that Spirit's extraversion makes him likeable and everyone else's instruction or assumptions make him seem conniving, because she can't imagine him deliberately politicking even at Lord Death's request. Regardless of the actual cause, he is rapidly becoming indispensable to the Shinigami. She doesn't know when the balance shifted, but now Spirit is gone more often than not, until having him in the house is rather like having a guest over - exciting and fun for a few days but oddly exhausting and irregular. By the time he goes back - to the Death Room, overseas, to catch a flight to some place Kami's never heard of - the house is strangely quiet and Kami feels like she could sleep for a week before she is recovered.

She hasn't let herself fully process the ramifications of this. They are too depressing, she knows they are, and she has every intention of hiding from the implications until forced to confront them. For now, for today, she is glad Spirit is back.

Maka takes the book from Spirit's hands and carefully closes it; even shut it's nearly as big as she is. Spirit lets her climb off his lap, holding the book in front of her as she heads for the bookcase.

Spirit watches her for a moment before he sits up fully to smile up at Kami.

"Good morning, Kami." He reaches out to touch her hand; the movement looks casual, but he shies back just at the end so his fingers just skim her skin. Kami twists her hand upside-down, closes her fingers around his palm. It feels odd to hold an adult's hand; her fingers expect the child-miniature of Maka's in hers from the weeks of recent experience. Her hands are nearly as large as Spirit's and picking up adrenaline from the physical contact as if they are on a first date.

When she looks up from their twined fingers, Spirit is looking at her with half-a-smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes.

"I miss you," he murmurs, the words too soft for Maka to hear a few feet away.

"I miss you too." Kami more forms the words with her lips than she vocalizes them, the response coming more out of habit than actual thought. Then Maka is turning around, coming back with a different book but the same smile. Spirit reaches out to help her back up onto the couch, settles himself back into the couch cushions, and looks down at their daughter with an expression that has all the delight of a doting father too-long-separated from his child.

That makes Kami actually smile. She tugs her fingers free and goes back to the bedroom to enjoy the time to herself. It doesn't seem sporting to interrupt the two of them during their father-daughter bonding time, and she's sure that given some time she'll stop feeling like she's interacting with a stranger. Definitely. It'll just take a little bit of time once Spirit is home more often.


	24. Trio

Stein is very, very relaxed. Marie can feel the lack of resistance in his arm when he swings her with each step, the hang of his shoulders as the knot usually just between his shoulderblades unravels into languid calm.

It means he is very, very nervous. Marie is just starting to really understand that Stein frequently works by opposites, and when the meister is relaxed it is to compensate for near-panic in his head. She can't hear his inner monologue - it is still too unformed for her weapon-form to pick up on meaning - but she doesn't need to.

Azusa, weapon-form in his left hand, sends a wordless sensation to Marie that encompasses all the mild irritation of an eyeroll. Stein must feel it - he can't not, with the three of them partially linked as they are - but he ignores that too, and Azusa lapses into mental and emotional silence again.

It should not be *that* frightening, Marie tells herself. She is trying for Stein's assumed calm, the self-control that allows him to force relaxation into his body instead of taut fright, but even in her head her inner voice is trembling. Stein has been handling single enemies so easily recently that even the worst Lord Death can find offer no more than token resistance, and his willingness to wield multiple weapons at one time makes him uniquely suited to go after multiple targets.

Still. No one goes after multiple opponents at once, at least no one who is still enrolled as a student at the Academy. "No one" has never stopped Stein before, of course, and Marie admits that there is no particular reason it should give him pause now, but she has never been so aware of the difference in their skill as she is now, and never so grateful for the two-star status he holds behind which she can take some cover.

She doesn't *mean* to broadcast her self-doubt, but at least some of it trickles through to the rest of the team, enough to get a reaction from both Azusa and Stein.

*Stop.* The impression is entirely within her head, so perfectly timed that Marie gets Stein's calm command and Azusa's half-affectionate scolding via a single thought. She avoids smirking at Azusa's discomfiture at this, but only just barely.

There is no warning at all from Stein, nothing in their surroundings that tips off either of the girls to an impending attack. Marie's first indication that he has noticed something is the tension in his arm and the sharp pivot he makes around his right foot, and then he is bringing Azusa straight up in front of him and firing almost before he could possibly line up a shot. Marie flinches at the speed of the movement, but she is the only one; Azusa has fallen into combat mode almost as rapidly as Stein did, her personal distaste for the meister entirely subsumed in her focus on the task at hand.

*On the right,* she offers, and now Marie is seeing what Stein saw or sensed a moment before, the shift of a shadow low in the waist-high growth and the shine of light off far too many teeth. There is a sound like a chainsaw, presumably some sort of hiss or roar from the enemy, and then it shifts and Marie loses sight of it again in the camouflaging shadows. Azusa is still focused on something, though, and at this distance she is the only one of them that can do anything, so Marie leaves the attack to her.

There is a faint rustle behind Stein; Marie isn't sure if she is hearing it herself or picking up on Stein's sometimes-uncanny hearing, but it hardly matters anyway. Stein swings sideways without looking, pulling his focus off the first demon to confront the second. Even he can't connect with a blind swing, Soul Perception or no, and Marie goes well wide of the red-eyed attacker, but it does stop short of range, apparently hesitant to close with her while Stein is looking.

The meister is smiling, the sharp-edged uncontrolled expression that Marie has only seen in particularly dangerous fights. His chin is down so the usual reflection off his glasses is gone, and Marie only notes the look in his eyes for a moment before her mind skitters away to the pacing Kishin egg in front of her as a safer focus.

Stein is backing up, Azusa holding her focus on the far demon on her own while he keeps his gaze on the nearer enemy. He is breathing deeply, carefully patterning his inhales and exhales in a way that Marie recognizes a moment before her brain catches up with her expectation.

"Resonate." He says it out loud, but he almost doesn't have to speak; Marie is dropping into the focus already, and although Azusa doesn't recognize Stein's calm herself she can pick up on Marie's shift and is echoing her almost as rapidly.

By any reasonable standard Resonating with both Azusa and Stein should be significantly harder than with Stein alone. Marie knows that trios are rare to begin with at the Academy and almost unheard-of with different weapon types; the simple fact that she is a tonfa and Azusa is a crossbow ought to have far more effect than their actual compatibility as friends.

Stein spends somewhat longer to slide into Resonance that usual; generally the process is almost instantaneous with him, and this time there is a noticeable pause before Marie's awareness spreads out into the meister and then further into the other weapon. There is a stutter in Stein's thoughts, rather like the mental equivalent to cracking one's knuckles, and just like that Marie is Stein is Azusa is Marie again, all of them bleeding into each other so Marie can feel her own one-sided affection for Stein and Azusa's dislike concurrently, so she is holding the lopsided weight of herself in one hand and feeling the tremble of the muscles in the other as she holds Azusa's weapon-self up against gravity and also seeing more clearly than she knew people /could/ see, absorbing information from her eyes and her periphery and the edges of her awareness that Marie-as-Marie is never even aware of. The part of herself that is somewhat more Azusa than either of the other two sighs the way Marie feels when she looks at Stein, like her mind is relaxing into where it was always meant to be, letting go of a tension she didn't know was there.

*Girls,* the Stein-part calls their attention back, borrowed amusement from herself or Azusa or both coloring his tone more than he ever would chose to do so on his own. *Let's go.*

Stein-Marie-Azusa steps forward, three minds somehow agreeing wordlessly to give the meister control over the legs while Azusa angles the left hand into a tighter grip on the crossbow and Marie flexes a right arm in expectation of the charge that she *knows* is about to come.

That must be Stein, picking up on fluctuations in the opponent's Soul that Marie can't quite see, even in Resonance, because the far Kishin egg closes suddenly, moving so smoothly that even Azusa doesn't see it flex in preparation before it is charging at them. This time when the three of them swing Marie's weapon-self connects solidly, bones crushing underneath the blunt weight and blood splashing from the shattered what-was-once-a-nose. There is a flush of pleasure at that, surging satisfaction that Marie would find horrifying if she weren't borrowing Stein's self-awareness at the moment. Between Stein's visceral delight and Azusa's cold determination to win, Marie's cringing horror is overridden, the hammer coming back to catch the flinching Kishin egg on the backhand as well, crushing into the side of its skull. The impact would be enough to destroy a human, but Kishin eggs are somewhat sturdier than that, so rather than permanent brain damage the hit just knocks the enemy sideways and leaves it stunned for a moment.

The second enemy is loping towards them, the chainsaw sound high and whining now, both more frightening and more painful to hear. They lift the crossbow and Marie finds out that Azusa's bolts are possibly *more* destructive at close range as hot blood sprays all across Stein's white-coated shoulder and catches her even on the far side. Stein runs his tongue across his lips and the bitter taste of blood echos across Marie's mouth.

The enemies don't really stand a chance after that. The one that took Marie's weapon-form to the head does get up, but it is shaky and hesitant to close, and once Stein is damp with blood he is unstoppable, stepping in towards the standing enemy until Marie cringes for the safety of their currently-shared body and even Azusa blinks hard, smashing the hammer in their hand into each enemy in turn while the other circles wide, leery with experience and growling that bone-shaking sound between too-sharp teeth. When Marie crushes the bone structure of the last of the two left alive, the vibration buzzes through her usual body and up into the meister's body that she currently borrows, and they all three feel the moment when it sharply cuts off.

Stein extricates their arm from the inside of the Kishin egg's body before it fully unravels, and stands for a moment catching their/his breath before he blinks, slowly and carefully, and lets the Resonance fade. Marie slides out of Azusa's head, out of Stein's body a moment later, back into her weapon-self where the pleasure in Stein's head and the taste on his skin fades rapidly into the realm of dreams and borrowed emotion. Still, she changes back to her own form as soon as she is fully herself again, just for the comfort of distance between her mind and Stein's. The meister's head is never a very pleasant place to be right after a fight. Azusa is a moment slower than she is, but when the other girl lands on her human-form knees she is wiping her mouth almost before she has hands, grimacing like the taste of blood is still in her mouth even though Marie knows it is an illusion and blinking as though she has gone blind.

Stein straightens from a crouch Marie didn't even realize he was in, stretches his arm back over his head so his back arches sharply backwards for a moment. When he comes back up, his eyes are clearer, more human and more shallow, a reflection off the depths rather than a clear angle downward into them. Marie wishes she wasn't relieved by that.

"One each." Azusa starts off sounding as if the words are a question, but twists the sentence into a statement just before the end, and Stein doesn't contradict her. The other weapon steps forward to pick up both Kishin souls, hands one over to Marie so she doesn't have to move at all. Marie is grateful. Moving is not something she can entirely trust her legs to do just at the moment, and it is easy to let Stein go into his post-fight silence with Azusa there to take the lead so Marie doesn't have to. There are some advantages to dual-weapon fighting, Marie admits, even as she blinks Azusa's crystal-clear vision from her memory along with Stein's sadism.


	25. Confidence

It is not that Kami planned to lash out. She was glad when Spirit came home this morning, pleased with Maka and her father's joint delight in seeing each other, amused by the play-family they all three throw themselves into whenever Spirit is home now as if to make up for lost time. She has been enjoying herself, appreciating the company and the conversation and the photo opportunities, but Spirit is putting Maka to bed and she can *feel* weeks of irritation tightening into her shoulders and tensing her face into lines of anger and all her attempts to calm herself are falling spectacularly flat.

There is a moment of guilt, as Spirit comes out from Maka's room and eases the door shut behind him, his face glowing with delight and affection, and Kami feels like she's been punched with the awareness that she is *picking* this fight, that they don't *have* to argue at all, that she could just enjoy his company.

But then Spirit is leaning in towards where she is sitting, smiling in blissful unawareness, and saying, "It's so good to see my girls again," and her barely-contained irritation seizes control of her tongue and she is drawing back and snapping, "You could see us more if you came *home* more often."

Spirit pulls back as if she has slapped him, all the contentment draining out of his face and his blue eyes filling with hurt, and the guilt is rising up Kami's throat but the anger is keeping the lead, and she keeps talking, the painful satisfaction of hurting him worth the reciprocal hurt in her own chest.

"I know it must be nice to only see us when you have to, when you can find the time to spare from your busy life, while we sit around waiting for the *honor* of your presence." Sarcasm wraps around her words, honing them into razor-sharp needles that she throws in place of the weapons she hasn't wielded for years. "And you've got plenty of other things to distract you. How often do you think about us, really? Do you remember to miss us once a day? Once a week?"

"Kami." Spirit's eyes are still bleeding pain but his jaw is starting to tense with anger. That's good, better than the silent judgment of hurt in his face. "What are you *saying*? You *know* I'd be here if I could."

"If you wanted it enough you would be." That was harsh, Kami knows it was, and deeply unfair, but she has been nursing her frustration at night after Maka is asleep, alone in her empty bed, for too many days and weeks and months, and seeing Spirit a few days out of the month isn't enough to undo the work of its converse.

Spirit flinches. His mouth opens to respond; he has to close it and swallow once, twice, before he can muster up a response. Kami feels like she is on fire, like the adrenaline in her veins has taken over her body and her mouth and all she can do is ride it out. And there is a part of her, a dark part but a part nonetheless, that is shrieking in satisfaction, that demands more emotional combat because she can't get the physical violence in her life, that wants revenge for her loneliness and demands the excitement that her day-to-day life lacks.

Finally he speaks, deliberately smoothing the anger from his face and meeting her eyes. His calm is more infuriating as a vicious response would be. "You know that's not true, Kami." The words are low, calm, but his traitorous voice wobbles at the end of the sentence so Kami knows she has struck a nerve.

It is enough to recall her to herself, to wipe away the flare of anger in the ice of guilt and rising horror at what she has said. She looks away first, sighs, shuts her eyes, tries to unknot the twist of anger between her shoulderblades.

"I'm sorry." The words are unfamiliar, hard to pronounce against the lingering fire of justified ire. "I shouldn't pick fights with you when you're home." Her throat closes for a minute as if with tears, but it is fury that she has to swallow back before she continues on as rationally as she can manage. "I know you'd be home more if Lord Death had anyone else, if there *was* anyone else to do the work he needs from you."

"I wish I was here more." Kami can't see Spirit's face with her eyes shut, but the desire in his tone is entire genuine or he has become a much better liar in the last year than she thinks he is capable of.

"It's just so *frustrating*." The distant rationality in Kami's head applauds her shift of blame from Spirit to some nameless outside source. The self-awareness implicit in her interior praise makes her smile in spite of her current mood. "It's great to be here with Maka, and it's easy, sure, but it's so…*mundane*, compared to you going out and politicking and fighting monsters and being the star of the party with five pretty young things draped all over you."

"It's - it's not -" Spirit pauses. Kami can almost hear the thoughts churning in his head, coalescing into coherency before he speaks. "I'd honestly rather be here than there, you know?"

"You know, that doesn't particularly *help*, Spirit," Kami snaps, but when she looks up at him he is fighting a smile and she's not angry with *him* anymore, so maybe it did help a little. "I just - I see more of you in tabloids and on the television than I do in person, and either they forget me entirely or they are hypothesizing our impending divorce at every turn."

Spirit goes white and he opens his mouth to retort, but Kami talks over him.

"Not that it *is* impending, you idiot. And I know it's ridiculous just as much as you do. But the repetition gets to me, you know? And I don't have a whole lot else to think about on my own most of the time." She sighs, reaches up to flick her hair back over her shoulders for something to do with her hands and a way to work out the tightness in her shoulders.

Spirit lowers himself to sit next to her, slightly farther than usual in deference to her cooling frustration but close enough that he can stroke her hair with his fingers, close enough that he can press his fingers into the tightness in her neck. Kami sees what he is doing, knows that this is a deliberate technique to put her in a good mood and clear away the last of the tension from their mini-fight. The awareness makes her resist out of pure contrariness for a moment, but then Spirit's fingers catch a particularly tense corner of her shoulder and she tilts her head and capitulates to the manipulation. It is hard to stay mad at Spirit when she is so happy to see him, when it is a relief even to have someone over the age of 5 to talk to and interact with, when someone else's touch sends chills of pleasure just from the rarity of the experience.

"Things will be okay," Spirit says softly. His voice is soothing even though he sounds like he's trying to convince himself as much as her.

Kami smiles into the distance. "Things will be okay," and her words have the confidence that his lacked.


	26. Plans

"Wow, you look *exhausted*."

It's not polite and certainly not what Marie was intending to say, but Sid and Nygus are wearing expressions that are so similar they look like they could be mirror images in spite of the dramatic differences in height and build and carriage. Sid grins in spite of the lines across his face and the shadows under his eyes; Nygus just looks at Marie without speaking.

The other weapon's lack of response is as normal as anything else, though, so Marie steps aside to let them in even as she starts an apology.

"Not that it's not great to see you, and of course you both look perfectly nice, just -"

"Like we haven't slept in a week," Sid finishes for her. He actually interrupts himself with a yawn he only half-covers with the back of a hand. "That would be because we haven't. Properly."

"Black Star causing trouble again?" Marie asks as she follows them down the hallway. By all rights she should be able to find her way back to the kitchen on her own, but when she leads it somehow ends up taking them twice as long as when she follows guests, and after a handful of visits everyone silently agreed that Nygus or Sid should head off the line.

"Always," Sid intones, and Nygus picks up with more detail in carefully precise tones at odd with the heaviness in her eyes.

"He's made a new friend. He and Maka are more trouble together than he manages to be alone."

"And he spends all his free time trying to invent new and exciting ways to show off when he sees her again." Sid finishes. "It's *delightful.*"

"Sounds that way," Marie politely agrees. It is not that she doubts that Sid and Nygus are worn down by the constant demands of an 8-year-old, nor that she would get tired of the requirements of an adoptive parent quickly, but the idea of excessive noise is so foreign that it is hard for her to even contemplate in the echoing quiet of the laboratory, and there is a tiny spark of uncharitable jealousy at how smoothly the two work together even in casual conversation before she is able to squash it.

It is not that Stein is *cold* or *distant*. He's just eccentric. Introverted.

She has only just finished telling herself this, again, when the meister in question comes around the corner.

"Ah. Sid. Nygus," he says, in a tone that is not quite warm but much closer to it than the shy coolness Marie would like to convince herself is normal. "Good to see you. How's Black Star?"

"Exhausting," they say in perfect synchronization, and Stein pauses, looks at them for a longer moment than his initial once-over.

"I see that. Did he learn a new trick or is it more of the usual?"

"New friend. Maka Albarn. Charming girl on her own, but Black Star seems to be a terrible influence on her," Sid answers for the both of them.

Stein doesn't flinch. His blink would be unnoticed if Marie weren't looking for some sort of reaction. "Spirit's daughter?"

"Death Scythe's." Nygus corrects him.

"That's right. Death Scythe's." Stein looks away from them, down at his hands, and for a moment there is a flicker of amusement at the corners of his mouth. Then he looks back up and Marie realizes what she is doing and forces herself to stop cataloguing his movements.

"Kami's going to kill us if we don't keep them both somewhat in hand." Sid sighs and drops into a chair. His knees fold past the right angle at which they should rest; nothing is ever sized quite correctly for Sid. "How are you two doing?"

"We've been hearing about nothing but you all over the Academy," Nygus puts in. "You, and Death Scythe doing the work of four weapons right now. You're still working on that, right Marie?"

"Yep." Marie sits down as well, on one side of the couch, and tries to not be disappointed when Stein stays standing. "We've collected a few more souls in the last few weeks. I've still got a ways to go, but it's progress."

"Are you going to stay here in Death City after you graduate?" Sid asks.

"I don't really know. I, uh… I actually haven't really thought much beyond the Academy itself. I've been thinking I'd like to just take off, retire from being a weapon entirely, go out and have a family, settle down, you know?"

Nygus looks like she is trying very hard to calmly listen instead of enumerating all the things that are a bad idea about having children, but Sid is nodding. Stein doesn't look like anything other than faintly interested. Marie is doing her best to not look at him or think about him or imagine children with silver hair and green eyes and it is not proving particularly successful.

"Don't tell Death Scythe until you're clear of the city," Sid half-laughs. "He's really anxious for some more Death Weapons to take some of the pressure off him, he might take it upon himself to convince you to stick around."

"Azusa's getting closer too," Stein puts in. Marie doesn't look at him, but she can hear the grind of the screw as he twists it absently into a new alignment. "She doesn't seem the type to retire."

"She's…" Sid pauses, trying to find some polite phrase to describe the absent weapon.

"Driven," Nygus sets into the gap, and Sid nods agreement.

"That's putting it mildly," Marie offers. She wishes Azusa were here now. Sid and Nygus are wonderful to talk to, and seeing them is a rare occurrence especially now that they are less and less often available as Black Star becomes more demanding, but Azusa is comfortingly straightforward and blunt in a way that Marie has learned to appreciate over the past several months. Unfortunately Azusa flat-out refuses to spend any more time than necessary with "That Sadist," as she calls Stein, and all Marie's efforts to convince her otherwise have thus far failed.

"Lord Death will be happy to have her as soon as she graduates. You too, if you change your mind."

Marie smiles at Sid and promptly changes the subject. "Have you two been going out on many assignments yourselves?"

"Fewer." As usual, Sid does most of the speaking for the two of them. "One or two in the last month. Busy at home means we don't have the energy to be at the top of our form, but Lord Death wants to make sure we're in practice."

Marie lets the conversation wash over her without really listening. The low rumble of Sid's voice and the higher monotone of Stein's are both soothingly normal and not too distracting, so she can let the panic about her unknown future flood her brain and then fade out slowly until she can breathe again. Nygus is watching her, looking like nothing so much as a hawk observing a possible threat, but the other weapon doesn't say anything about the stress that Marie is sure she's not hiding. She is grateful to her for that; Azusa would have called her out on it. It's nice to pretend that everything is fine rather than tearing up her feelings by exposure, at least for a little while.


	27. Strength

The only thing keeping Kami together is the fact that she is an *adult*, as she is savagely repeating over and over in her head, and the fact that Maka is sitting on the couch watching the same television she is and her daughter is far too old to miss an emotional breakdown.

She *wants* to have one, though, wants to throw dishes and scream and punch the wall until her hand bleeds. But there is no one to pick her up from the abyss if she lets herself fall, and Maka deserves better than her mother falling to pieces, and if Spirit's not going to be around to be the strong one then she *damn* well will manage.

She still goes around the corner to aggressively fold laundry, where at least she can't see Spirit's generic smile. She can still hear his voice, though.

"It's great being a Death Weapon," he laughs in response to some faint question from the reporter. "I can help keep order in the world, and I get to meet all sorts of interesting people."

Lord Death cuts in then, something about "always knew Death Scythe had great potential," but somehow the increase in his pitch doesn't make his voice carry any better than Spirit's.

Kami knows that Spirit wishes he were at home. He has told her over and over, every night on the phone, every day that he is home, and she can hear the sincerity in his voice then as clearly as she can identify its absence now. It is not that he is lying, per se - Spirit has always been utterly terrible at lying - but his cheer is slightly exaggerated, his responses a little too carefully framed for entire honesty. Even *knowing* that doesn't entirely blunt the edge of his happiness, the sparkle in his eyes that Kami only sees through the television screen now, and she's not sure if she's more angry with the reporter for *being* there with him or with Spirit for *not* being here with her or with *herself* for staying at home, for lacking whatever mystical potential Spirit apparently showed to Lord Death his first day as a student that has given him the life of a Death Weapon and left her trapped at home.

Her face is hot and flushed with frustration, but her eyes are still perfectly dry. That's good. She can work with that. Kami has gotten careful practice at reining in her emotions, holding back her fury, and her cold dissatisfaction is growing but at least Maka doesn't see it. It's not good for Spirit, she knows, it's not good for their relationship or for her own stability, but Maka is the one she sees every day, and she is able to justify prioritizing her daughter's well-being over anything else, even though she knows it *is* a justification for her behavior.

After a moment she is distant enough to come back around the corner, to lean against the back of the couch where Maka can't easily see her face and reach down to brush her fingers against her daughter's pale blond hair.

"Is papa coming home soon?" Maka asks. Her questions have taken on a pleading tone that echoes Kami's own feelings and that pours maternal frustration and affectionate hurt into Kami's veins. She half-smiles at the similarity, swallows against the tears in her voice, and when she speaks her throat is clear and her tone is cheerful.

"He'll be home in a few days to see you. And you'll get to talk to him tonight when he calls. He loves talking to you, you know."

Maka smiles at the image of Spirit on the television. She tends towards calm restraint; Kami can see precocious sobriety in her expression much of the time, in the careful way she chooses her words, even in the way she leads her often-overexcited best friend to less destructive pursuits than those to which his instincts lead him. Kami has no idea where Maka got this self-possession; it is clearly not from Spirit, who is laughing easily even in the stilted situation of an interview, or from her mother, who is still biting her tongue against the over-senstive personal hurt that Spirit brings with his voice now. Perhaps the mix of their excessive feelings cancelled out in Maka somehow.

It would be easier if she had someone else to talk to. It *was* easier, back years and years ago, when Kami had a friend in Ashe and a boyfriend in Spirit and an outlet for her frustrations in either direction. But she lost touch with her original partner almost as soon as Ashe left Death City - if Kami is perfectly honest with herself, as she tries to avoid being for her own sanity, she didn't bother even making the attempt, as caught up in the shine of her first serious relationship as she was, and by the time life with Spirit faded into everyday concerns she had a daughter and an often-absent husband and no one to call when Maka went down for her nap and the house filled up with strange silence.

If Spirit were around more, it would be easier too, or if Maka were older, or if she could complain to her mother without feeling like she is betraying her marriage, or any number of changes that are all equally impossible in the moment. Kami pulls her hand back from Maka's head, irrationally worried that her frustration will somehow telegraph through her fingertips into Maka's mind, and tries to distract herself by admiring the softness of the light on her daughter's hair and memorizing the rapidly-fading baby softness of her daughter's face before it is all gone for good.

The phone rings before the pre-recorded interview is over, and Kami does her best to ignore that it is five minutes later than yesterday's call, which was seven minutes later than the call the night before, and fills her voice with assumed cheer before she answers.

"Hello?"

"Kami!" Spirit's voice is tinny with the static of distance, crackling with electric interference and what Kami suspects is the frenetic energy of a few glasses of champagne. "How are my favorite girls today?"

Kami opens her mouth to respond and the words stick in her throat for a moment. With Maka there she doesn't have much she can say, not really, but she could walk around the corner, go into the other room and vent to Spirit, at least. There is nothing he can do to make things better - this is not his choice, she knows, and he would change it if he could, but maybe it would help to spill out her feelings again, to go back over the same well-trodden frustration, to let him be the strong one for a minute while she indulges in temporary weakness.

Maka turns to look at her. "Is it papa?"

The unfeigned excitement in Maka's eyes is what does it. Kami knows she could duck into her bedroom, shut the door, and let Spirit take the burden of her anger for a moment. But the moment will end, and then it will be only her again, and staying strong for Maka will only be harder if she caves now, and she can hear Spirit laughing at something in the background where she isn't.

She blinks, and smiles at Maka, and lets love for the little girl on the couch fill her voice when she speaks. "We're great. Maka wants to talk to you already."

"That's because she loves her papa!" Spirit crows, and Kami reaches out to hand the phone to her daughter as Maka grins like her father and stretches for it.

"Papa?" Kami hears her say. Kami turns back to the mundane relaxation of the laundry, hardening her resolve to make her declaration to Spirit less of the lie it is.


	28. Scream

It feels strange to be in weapon form without the quiet murmur of Azusa's thoughts at the back of Marie's head. Stein is very quiet, always is when they are on an assignment, and especially so today. Marie didn't realize how frequently Azusa joined them in fights, how regular the other girl's mental presence had become, until she tried to figure out why the quiet was making her so uncomfortable. Identifying it helped, a little, but she still feels off-balance and edgy in a way that unnerves her.

She is nervous, too, far more worried than she probably needs to be. The target is unusual in a dozen ways, and Lord Death is far more concerned about it than he has ever been before, even when Stein first requested a double target assignment. But Lord Death is there with them too, Lord Death and a handful of other meisters, the Academy's current brightest and best, and between them they should have no trouble at all dealing with the singular target of today's attack, even if Stein is distracted by casually ignoring the section of space presently occupied by Lord Death and Death Scythe.

There are three other meisters currently creeping down the streets of the city: Lord Death, of course, and Sid and Nygus for their experience working with Stein, and a blond boy Marie has never seen before, who looks like he has only the faintest relationship with puberty as yet and is walking empty-handed and is apparently the youngest student to ever graduate the Academy, passing even Stein's skill by some estimations. His youth has no effect on the adult fanaticism in his eyes, the calm beat of his pace, and Marie wonders under her mental breath if "star Academy student" is always synonymous with "utterly insane." Stein almost laughs; his mouth twists into a smirk that he catches just on the edge of sound. Apparently her mental whisper was still loud enough for him to catch.

The street is silent, the houses around it now-deserted, evacuated in preparation for exactly this maneuver. They've been tracking the target for hours, taking advantage of its known tendency to avoid combat to edge it back into a corner most convenient for them. Marie is trying very hard to think of it as a "target" and an "enemy" rather than what she knows it is, what it is about this assignment that has brought Lord Death down from the Death Room and the best meisters out en masse, but the knowledge keeps bursting upon her unexpectedly and sending cold horror through her veins.

It is a student they are hunting through the streets, or a former student, at least. A weapon turned Kishin egg after the death of his meister, strong and unpredictable and tragic in a way that Marie has never seen in any other target. It might just be the similarity between his own story and hers, the fear in her at facing the path her life could have gone, but there is more to it too, a horror at facing something that might still look mostly human, that could be recognizably a student that she passed in the hallways of the Academy.

*You'll be fine," Stein says. It is not comfort, not quite, but the calm assurance in his mental tone is as close as he has ever come that she knows of.

Unfortunately the interiority of the communication means that his own tension is bleeding into the words as well in a way that he could prevent in the case of audible speaking. Marie wants to hug him, just wrap her arms around his chest where her head reaches and wait until the stress of being near the partner he nearly killed and nearly killed himself over has leeched out of him. Of course she's not sure what holds Stein together other than perpetual, adopted stress sinking into his muscles and skin, so perhaps comforting him isn't the best option.

And she's let her thoughts run away with her again. Marie is deeply grateful that she doesn't currently have a face to blush with, but the embarrassment that hits her as she realizes Stein is at least peripherally aware of her thoughts is just as cringingly painful as it is in human form.

He doesn't say anything coherent, but there is a brief impression of gratitude that is gone so quickly Marie is fairly sure it was unintentional. It helps, a little, and then Lord Death is rising up to his full height and stepping (floating?) forward at almost-a-jog and Marie's internal convolutions are forgotten in the pressure of her panic, in the knowledge that the fight is right here and right now, and in the relief that Stein is doing the walking and she doesn't have to make herself move.

They have hounded the weapon into a dead-end alley on the fringes of the city; the sun is still high in the sky but it doesn't entirely penetrate into the shadows, and Marie doesn't see much around Lord Death's irregular outline except a patch of too-dark shadow and the flicker of movement. Then there is a hiss, and the sound cuts straight past the weapon-distance of Marie's current form and jars her non-existent spine with horrible vibration.

"Come out," Lord Death asks, and it is a plea, the squeak of his voice softened into gentleness.

The blond boy pipes up, his voice nearly as high as Lord Death's and so loud it echoes off the alley walls. "We can help you, Ragnarok."

Stein doesn't speak, but his hand tightens on the handle of Marie's weapon form, and Sid shifts his feet slightly so he is physically blocking the exit to the alley. Marie agrees with their assessment, even though she doesn't have the angle to see the reaction of the Kishin egg huddled against the back of the alley. The sound it made is still echoing along her bones and nothing with any humanity left could make a sound like that.

"Go ahead, Justin," Lord Death says, angling back to make space for the boy to come forward. He does, his hands extended at an angle that is carefully nonthreatening and reminds Marie of a cross. His footfalls are oddly spaced, sounding like the beat of a drum more than a normal measured pace.

Justin is nearly within arm's reach of the crouching shadow when it moves, lurching up to its full height and skittering sideways. The boy dives for it, hands extended and glowing white, but it veers out of reach and light catches off a black blade as it swings towards him.

Marie starts to shriek, almost drops out of weapon form, but Justin's arm comes up faster than she's ever seen anyone move and the sword bounces off his wrist with a distinctly metallic sound. The shadow swings forward towards Lord Death and Justin spins to track it and that's when Marie sees the inch of silver blade along his arm.

Lord Death spins the black scythe in his too-large hands up to block the sword flashing toward him without pulling back, and in the light Marie can see the enemy now. The sound notwithstanding, it looks terrifyingly human, a young man with normal features except that he looks as if he has been dipped in ink. Then the head turns towards Stein, and the eyes are glowing red like Kishin egg souls and the black skin splits into a grin that has far, far more teeth than it should, and the resemblance to a human is lost under the weight of horrifying *wrongness*.

It comes towards them, the sword it has in place of an arm grating along the scythe blade with that same awful resonance. It swings its other arm slowly, deliberately testing them so obviously that even Marie can identify it, and Stein brings her up to block without so much as blinking in reaction.

The too-wide mouth opens, and for a moment Marie has the oddly clear impression of a lipstick-red tongue. Then her thoughts shatter apart under *something* that is hitting her like a truck, and Stein is shouting in the back of her head but she can't remember how to understand language and she can't remember how to breathe and she can't remember how to work her body.

There is a shock that ripples through her secondarily, the force like an electrical impulse but without the almost-pain associated with it, and then she can think again.

*What happened?* she asks, dazed with the momentary loss of her awareness and the tingling aftershocks of Stein's Soul Force.

"It screamed," Stein says aloud, and Marie realizes that Sid has angled sideways, as if to interpose his body between the creature and Nygus, and Justin's face is twisted in lingering pain, and Lord Death's mask is angled into fury.

"Stop." Marie doesn't recognize the voice, but it rumbles through her, the command in it strong even secondhand, and Lord Death strides forward so he is pinning the thing between himself and the back of the alley. There is an arc of movement and the black scythe bursts with white light, the shape subtly *wrong* for Death Scythe, and the blinding weapon comes down just as the air crackles into a scream again.

When the sound fades from the air, Lord Death is standing over the back of the alley, the scythe in his hands resting against the ground, and Justin is backed up against the wall and gazing up at Lord Death like he's seen heaven. Stein blinks, says, "It's over," and Marie transforms back to her human self.

Sid and Nygus stay where they are and Marie is fairly certain that nothing could persuade Stein to come any closer to Death Scythe than he already is, so she steps forward to slide into the space between Justin and Lord Death.

There is no soul at all. Instead there is just a black sword shining in the faint light, looking utterly innocuous in the back of the alley.

Lord Death reaches forward and picks it up, holds it up so it catches the sunlight and glistens like obsidian. "The Demon Sword. I had hopes for him."

"What did you do, Lord?" Justin asks. Marie can hear the capital letter on the title.

Lord Death sighs, lowers the sword back into shadow. "I killed what consciousness was left. He can continue in this form, safe in the vaults of the Academy."

"You are truly wise, oh Lord," Justin intones. If he didn't sound so sincere Marie would suspect him of mocking Lord Death, but the light of devotion in his eyes is unmistakable.

She wonders if she has ever looked at Stein that way, and then has a moment of utter panic before she remembers that Stein's not in her head anymore. When she looks back at the meister, he is staring blankly at the back of the alley, the fingers of his left hand flexing slightly against his side. She wonders if *he* has ever looked at anything that way, if he will ever look at *her* that way, and isn't sure if the tightness in her throat is self-deprecating laughter or tears.


	29. Secondhand

"Spirit Albarn, *what* are you doing."

It isn't a question. Kami doesn't realize until she is halfway through speaking that she is using her Mother voice, the one she uses with Maka when she and BlackStar are getting out of hand, the one that goes straight to some instinctive part of the brain and makes the hearer feel like a cringing child, but Spirit flinches instead of arguing with her tone and she really doesn't regret using it, given the circumstances.

The paving stones of their front step are cold under her bare feet, but she doesn't notice until she has pulled the cigarette from Spirit's unresisting fingers and tossed it to burn out on the pavement.

"Uh," he says, eyes blank of explanation and filled with guilty surprise.

"You will *not* smoke in *my* house, around *my* daughter*." Kami's voice is grating in her throat and she is glaring so hard she can feel the muscles of her face cramping around the frustrated lines, but her adrenaline is egging her on and self-righteous rage is pooling in her thoughts.

Spirit cringes, looks away, and when he looks back there is a spark of resentful defiance in his eyes. "Hey. She's my daughter too." He is trying for defensive but it is a weak rebuttal and the lack of strength undermines the tone he is going for.

That is a road that Kami does not want to go down right now, partially because he is right and partially because any sort of comeback she might make is such a low blow that even her long-steeped anger shies from it. She changes the subject instead, bracing a hand on her hip and leaning in towards Spirit so he angles away from her and undoes whatever advantage his extra height might give him.

"You should know better than to *smoke* around our daughter. You are her *father*, Spirit, you should be trying to keep her *safe* rather than putting her health in danger."

His eyes go wide with horror and the fight drains out of his face so completely that Kami sees the lines of exhaustion rise under his eyes, along his cheeks. Against the backdrop of his physical strain he looks very pale and very tired, oddly fragile for a man who is inches taller than her and can turn into a pure black six-foot scythe at a moment's notice.

"I wasn't," he begins, but when Kami raises an eyebrow he loses whatever the rest of his statement is and looks away. "Thinking," he finishes after a pause that indicates that wasn't what he was originally going to say.

"No, you weren't." This is kicking him when he's down, Kami recognizes, but the awareness is at a great distance and she doesn't really have control over the bite in her words anymore. There is a masochistic satisfaction in hurting the man she loves, in visiting revenge on his directly for the pain he has been inflicting on her indirectly with every cheerful interview and every business trip and every day he has left her alone. "What would even make you *start* smoking, Spirit? It's *terrible* for you and you never used to and I *will not have it* in my house. What *possessed* you? Or were you not *thinking*?" Her words are razor-sharp, cold and honed by the nights of insomniac practice her mind has given her, the imaginary arguments she played over and over until her every comeback is perfect.

He isn't looking at her. His shoulders are slumped forward, his hands in his pockets, and for all that he is pushing six feet he looks like nothing so much as a chastised schoolboy. "It -"

"Did you pick it up from one of your *girlfriends*?"

He jerks his head in the negative before arresting the motion and flushing red at the passive admission to having the girlfriends mentioned. It isn't like he's giving anything away that Kami doesn't know, that she doesn't see in the television spots about the popular new Death Scythe whose wife and daughter are somehow never mentioned or in the tabloid articles that always feature photos of her drunk husband between two or three or four laughing blondes. But Spirit never says anything about it directly, even when Kami needles and needles him in an attempt to gain an admission or an apology or an argument - she's never sure which - and seems to consider every accidental slip as more of a failure in himself than the fact that there is anything there to admit in the first place.

When he talks it is too fast, stumbling over his words in an attempt to cover up the admission of body language he has already granted her. "It's soothing, you know, I just tried one once and it helped me sleep and it's so hard to fall asleep recently and there's always so much to do I never have enough time for it -"

"Maybe if you tried sleeping *alone* you'd have somewhat more *success*," Kami spits past clenched teeth, her voice quiet but so diamond-hard that Spirit's words cut off mid-syllable. He looks at her for a moment, his eyes wide and blue and hurt, and it's not *fair* that Kami should feel so guilty when *he* is the one who is doing the hurting, and she turns on her bare feet and goes back inside, slowing her steps to a stalk instead of a retreat, and she only slams the door a little when she blocks out the apology and the pain in his tired eyes.


	30. Smoke

"I'm willing to put up with it for the sake of gaining souls," Azusa is saying as she and Marie walk up the path to the laboratory door. "That doesn't mean I *like* him."

"Still?" Marie asks. The conversation has the well-worn pattern of an often-repeated discussion; she almost doesn't have to think through her end. "It would be so much easier to see you if you were willing to tolerate his presence."

"Not without an assignment," Azusa says, but her voice lacks the determination she usually has in her opinions and it makes Marie smile while her back is to the other girl. She is wearing her down, slowly. At least that gives her a sense of accomplishment, however small it may be.

When she gets the door open, Azusa makes a face and adjusts her glasses somewhat more vigorously than necessary. "And I absolutely refuse to be around secondhand smoke. See you later, Marie."

The hall is indeed smoky, the burnt smell of cigarettes clinging to the air and the walls. It's a new development in a setting that hasn't changed at all since Marie moved in almost ten years ago, which makes it more interesting than irritating for now. The smell also gives her something to follow. She makes it to the living room in record time with only a couple wrong turns on the way.

Stein is stretched out full-length on the couch, which is not quite long enough to hold all of him so his feet are dangling over the far edge. He is smoking, or rather exhaling a lungful of smoke while idly twisting the end of a cigarette between his fingers, and staring at the haze collecting around the ceiling as if it has the secret to life written in the translucent curls. From her position near the door he can't see Marie directly, and she takes advantage of the angle to pause and stare at him in this rare opportunity.

He looks half-melted, like his arm and ankles have gone soft and limp with warmth or exhaustion, but his eyes are focused on the smoke overhead with far more intent than the cause warrants. His fingers are inordinately long and so skinny they just look longer, angled around the cigarette between them in a way that Marie can't imitate if she tries and that looks as normal as anything ever does with Stein.

He is beautiful and he is perfect and he doesn't know she exists.

That is when he speaks, interrupting her descent into excessive analogies linking the present moment to the whole of their relationship and disproving at least the last of her interior monologue. "How was Azusa?"

"Good." He still isn't looking at her, but Marie looks away so the feelings on her face won't leech into her voice. "When did you start smoking?"

"Two days ago."

"W-why?"

Stein inhales another breath of smoke before he answers. "I wanted a cigarette."

"Just like that?"

"Yep."

Marie considers arguing this point, considers pointing out that most people don't just start craving things they've never had before, but it is easy to imagine Stein's blank reaction and it seems like a waste of time, so she lets it go instead. There is the obvious response, the protest she could make about secondhand smoke and the health risks and the impact it will have on her life, but even after the years she has lived here Marie can't quite bring herself to think of the lab as *their* home. It's Stein's space, not hers, and the phrasing would imply a closeness that she doesn't feel either, partners or not.

Maybe it would be easier to think of Stein and herself as "we" if she didn't want the phrasing to confer so much more meaning than it does. It doesn't matter, really. She can't stop feeling that way, and he just *doesn't* feel that way, so the word is off-limits. Besides, it's become normal, living in a space where she constantly feels like a half-ignored guest or a forgotten roommate.

"How was the infirmary?" she asks instead, edging around the perimeter of the room to claim a chair at a sufficiently neutral distance from Stein's languid form.

"I saved the meister."

That is something of a surprise. Marie's eyebrows raise of their own accord before she manages to speak. "Wow. That's - good job."

"Thank you." Another pause for another lungful of smoke. "They'll call me in the next time there's a serious injury. I'm glad it went well this time. The hands-on experience was helpful." His voice is monotone in spite of the words stating emotion, but Marie has never seen him this relaxed so he is probably being entirely sincere.

"That's really amazing," Marie hears herself say, and her words are infused with the pleasure that Stein's tone lacks. "I didn't -" She stutters to a halt, not able to enunciate the thought in her head.

"The nurse didn't think she'd live either." Stein finishes the sentence that she can't. The bluntness of the statement is hard to hear, but the selfish and desperate part of Marie is distantly charmed by the implication of understanding in him finishing her half-formed thought. "She will."

There is the faintest hint of pleasure in those words. Marie isn't sure what it is that conveys the emotion; it might even just be the way Stein bites them off crisply, like it is a simple fact of the universe, but she can *hear* the hint of a smile in the syllables.

The silence that spreads out is less strained than usual. Something about the borrowed smoke in the air when Marie inhales and the extra-slow pace of Stein's breathing is soothing, feels strangely normal in a way that the laboratory never has before. Even when Marie realizes that Stein has fallen asleep on the couch - Stein, who *never* sleeps, who has never relaxed enough to sleep around her and certainly not on the relative discomfort of the couch - it feels normal, or like it could be normal. Eventually.


	31. Screen

It is something on Maka's face when Kami comes out into the living room that stops her. Kami has started actively avoiding the television, carefully forgetting the times that there will be an "exclusive interview with the newest Death Scythe" so she doesn't feel guilty about missing them, and Spirit stopped asking if she saw them years ago, right about the same time that the questions focused more on the girls he was seen with than his actual work as a Death Scythe. Kami has gotten so good at ignoring the sound of Spirit's voice on the television that she has spent hours in the living room or just around the corner and had no recollection of Spirit's answers at all, but when she comes around the corner and sees Maka there is a set to her daughter's jaw that pulls her attention to the screen.

It's not an interview, not this time. It takes Kami a moment to identify what's going on, but the collection of blurry photographs and the edge in the reporter's voice draws the picture for her clearly within just a few seconds. It only makes sense that Spirit would be the focus of an expose eventually, after the way he's been behaving recently, but Kami didn't realize how bad it had gotten and for a moment she is brought up short by the images on the television.

While she is processing the visuals, before she has really taken in what Maka is seeing, her daughter's voice comes clear over the gossipy buzz of the announcer's narration.

"Why isn't papa home with us, mom?"

That is not quite the question Kami expected, and her well-practiced excuse about tabloids and attention-seeking reporters dies in her mouth. She looks at Maka's profile, really takes in the expression in her green eyes and the faint frown on her lips and the way her knees are tucked against her chest and the tension in the arms wrapped around her legs, and her stomach drops into cold misery.

There is nothing she can say. Maka is too old to be put off with distractions or evasions, and Kami doesn't have an answer that satisfies herself, much less the desire of a child who doesn't fully understand the demands of a job and who just wants her father to be at home. It is strange to see the solemn anger on Maka's face, part like looking in a youthful mirror and part like seeing Spirit angry, but Kami can't remember Spirit ever looking as cold and furious as Maka looks right now, not even when he broke off his partnership with Stein.

"Papa's got important work to do," Kami says, even though she knows that won't be enough, and Maka talks over the last of her words like she is expecting the filler response.

"That doesn't look very much like work to me."

Kami doesn't have any answer for that. She reaches out to touch Maka's hair, as careful as if her daughter might hit her, but Maka doesn't react at all to the contact, and Kami lets her hand slide across the smooth-parted hair pulled into a pigtail.

"Papa loves you, sweetie," she says with somewhat more sincerity than her first excuse.

"Then why isn't he here with us?"

The silence that stretches between them answers better than Kami is able to. After a few seconds, when it becomes clear that Kami doesn't have an response, Maka tightens her hold on her knees and slumps her shoulders down so her mouth is tucked behind her legs.

The television report ends well before Spirit makes his nightly call. Maka turns the television off as soon as it is over and buries herself in a book. Kami lets her avoid the subject, doesn't touch it again in hopes that Maka will have forgotten her frustration by the time Spirit calls even though nothing about Maka's usually stubborn nature leads her to expect success.

She knows her hopes are futile when Maka hunches forward at the ring of the phone, curling in over her book as if she can ignore the sound entirely if she tries hard enough. Sometimes Maka will run to be the one to pick up; Spirit is the only person who ever calls late in the evening, usually the only person calling them at all. This time Kami answers, politely formal as always.

"Hello?"

"Kami!" The background noise is unusually loud tonight; Spirit must still be wherever he landed tonight without going outside. This doesn't bode well for their conversation; usually he steps out if he thinks of it, which means he probably isn't thinking at all right now. "How're my girls?"

He is slurring audibly, the words trailing into each other like they are a single sound in the back of his throat. There is a laugh from the background and Kami wonders who it is, how close the other person is to Spirit.

"Same old," she carefully dodges, but Spirit is definitely not thinking clearly enough to pick up on the reservation in her tone.

"Wish I was with you." Repetition has dulled the sincerity of the words. Kami barely hears them at all, is barely listening to Spirit for the attention she is paying to the skinny line of Maka's shoulders. "Is Maka there?"

"She's here." That's a warning too, the sentence like a door shutting if Spirit were aware enough or sober enough to hear it, but he's too far gone to listen.

"Lemme talk to my favorite girl!"

Kami drops the phone to her side, looks at the tension in her daughter's posture. She is trying to make rapid-fire judgments about the situation, decide if she should put Spirit off so Maka won't realize he's drunk or let him talk so he can reassure Maka that he does love her as Kami *knows* he does, and she can't sort out what are her own feelings and what are reasonable and finally she just asks.

"Do you want to talk to him?"

Maka straightens, her back curving into consciously perfect posture. She doesn't turn at all.

"No."

It is not that Kami is surprised, exactly. It is just that Maka has never refused to talk to Spirit before.

"Spirit," Kami says as she brings the phone to her ear again.

"Is that my Maka?" he burbles, and Kami can't tell now if this is enthusiasm or alcohol or both in her tone.

"She doesn't want to talk to you."

The background noise swells to fill the silence that Spirit's lack of response creates. For a moment there is just the dull beat of a bass line and muffled words from distant conversations. When Spirit speaks again, his words have the forced clarity of attempted sobriety and a panicked edge Kami hasn't heard in years.

"What do you mean? She doesn't want to talk to her papa?" That is an attempt at lightness, but it falls flat before Spirit is even done with the sentence.

"She said no."

There is another long pause before Spirit says "Oh," and the word is short enough that Kami can't hear the alcohol at all, just the hurt, and she wants to cry but can't, not with Maka there, so she says "We'll talk to you tomorrow," before she hangs up and hopes that it's true.


	32. Conclusion

Marie's hands are shaking by the time Stein comes home from the Academy. She has been getting steadily more and more nervous while she waits, and since Lord Death and the school nurse started letting Stein help in the infirmary his hours have been irregular so she can't predict when he'll come in the front door. She had almost hoped he would be gone today, stay out the whole night so she could drop into exhausted dreamless sleep before having the conversation with him that she needs to, but it's barely sunset when the front door creaks open and all the blood in her body goes cold with fright.

She can't muster up the voice to call out to him, so she just stays still, listening to the shuffle of his footsteps approaching down the hall until he rounds the corner and she can pull her eyes up to his face.

He's not looking at her; he's got something in his hands, a stack of papers that he's flipping through as he walks, and he's twisting the screw in his head with his off-hand in time with his steps. He's nearly past her by the time she is able to force herself to interrupt the concentration in his face.

"Stein."

There's no force to the word at all, but it rings loud in the quiet of the room and Stein looks up immediately, even though it takes his eyes a moment to focus on her face, as if he was lost somewhere far in his thoughts and he has to travel the intervening space to return to the present moment. Then his screw clicks into a new alignment, he blinks twice quickly, and then he smiles at her. It doesn't reach his abstracted eyes in the moment she sees them before the light reflects off the glass and turns them opaque.

"Marie. Do you need something?"

Marie looks away from Stein's face. It's not as if she is getting any information from his expression anyway, and it is easier to talk while she looks at her hands.

"Do you know how many Kishin souls we've collected so far?" she asks her hands.

There is a pause. She can almost hear Stein reviewing their time as partners in his head, reliving their fights in fast-forward and running a total in his head. She knows once he gets the count from the faintly incredulous laugh.

"I just need the witch soul now," she continues without waiting for more of a response. "I mean, then I'll be a Death Weapon, which was always the end goal." She stops before the pleading "right?"can attach itself to the end of the sentence, swallows back the uncertainty before she goes on. "I can retire. Get married. Have a couple kids." She is smiling now, sad and happy at once. "And you'll have me out of your hair. It should be easier for you to do what you need to do. And Lord Death could make great use of a three-star meister who doesn't have an official partner."

The pause is long this time, so long Marie goes past anticipation into cold panic into calm again, so long that she starts listening to the pace of her breathing for lack of anything else to focus on. When Stein does eventually speak the words are soft, as if she is a half-tamed thing that might bolt at a touch. The mental image reminds her so strongly of her first day in the lab that she has to shut her eyes against the nostalgic burn of tears.

"If that's what you want."

She can't speak because her voice will give the lie to her words. If he uses Soul Perception on her he will certainly see what's tearing through her thoughts, but the best thing Marie can manage right now is a shaky bluff so she nods and hopes he won't look.

She hears the sound of the screw turning again. Her spine prickles at the sound, as it always does, but repetition has bred a bizarre familiarity and right now everything seems silver-edged with the possibility of impending loss. The click sounds very, impossibly final in the quiet of their offset breathing.

"Okay."

She should be happy. She sound be relieved. She should look forward to this as the completion of her goal of years, as freedom from the imposed burden of living with someone she adores who has never looked at her twice. It will be better and she can find someone else and in someone else's eyes she can forget his.

She isn't happy. She can't even force a smile onto her face for the purposes of covering up the bleeding pain of unrequited love. She can't put cheer into her tone at all; when she speaks, she sounds like Stein.

"Good."

She stands up from the table, opens her eyes, leans heavily on her hands until she feels secure on her feet. She doesn't look at Stein. It's easier that way.

The silence as she walks towards the hall says he hasn't turned back to the papers in his hand, but he doesn't say anything until she is almost past turning around.

"Is this what you want, Marie?"

Her name in his voice is so rare that it stops her dead. She almost stumbles, catches her balance, smooths out the roughness in her throat and steels herself to turn. When she does, it is with a smile that she hopes is bright enough that he won't notice the shine to her eyes.

"Of course." That's all she meant to say, but his head is tipped and she can see his eyes really *looking* at her and the need to cover her hurt pours more words out. "It's all I've really ever wanted. Just...to have a normal life, to find a husband and make a home and just be *happy* and *normal.*"

Stein barely hesitates. If she hadn't lived with him for years, she wouldn't have noticed the breath of a pause before he speaks.

"Yes." He tips his chin far up, so he must be looking at the ceiling. "I can understand that."


	33. Ending

Spirit is nervous when he comes in the front door of the house. His eyes are frightened, lines of stress etched around his mouth and into his forehead so deep they linger even when he adopts a smile for Kami. Kami doesn't even try. It doesn't seem worth it, especially with Maka out of the house so she can have this conversation. It isn't as if she and Spirit don't know perfectly well how things stand between them. What point is there in pretending?

Spirit's forced smile fades slowly as he takes in Kami's expression. Kami wishes she didn't feel like she was crushing something beautiful in not responding to his attempts at cheer, but it has been years and she is tired of saying nothing and feeling everything as soon as Spirit leaves the house, and this time she is going to have this conversation if it kills her.

"Spirit." Her tone isn't welcoming, just an acknowledgment of her husband's existence.

Spirit looks edgy, like he might turn and run at a moment's notice. "Kami." This would be when he would normally lean in to hold her or kiss her or just smile at her, the point when she would forgive him everything for a day or two until he leaves again and all the frustrations come back. Something in her face keeps him distant though, standing in the entryway like a stranger who needs to be invited to come in any further.

"We need to talk." Obviously they need to talk, they wouldn't be standing here like they're about to throw punches if everything was fine, but the words help ease Kami's mental state into the transition into what she needs to say. They also crush Spirit's face into utter terror for a moment, but that can't be helped.

"About what?" he asks, voice shaking.

The women, the drinking, the smoking - Kami has any number of topics she could choose from, any number of defensible positions to take up, but it is well past the point of talking about the details. There's really only one solution left.

"I want you to move out."

For a moment the words send ripples out into the silence that follows them, gaining weight and importance in the lack of response. Spirit's face doesn't change as Kami was afraid it might; he is less surprised than she was worried he would be. That helps, or it will help later when she is replaying this moment over and over and wondering if she should have done something differently.

When he does speak, it is almost exactly what Kami expected. That helps, too. "For god's sake, Kami, let's talk about whatever it is you're upset about." He sounds calm, reasonable, and even if his eyes are scared the steady rhythm to his words makes it easy to ignore the panic in the rest of him.

"No." That sounds harsh. "Spirit." That comes out almost too soft, half a caress and almost a sob, and Kami would look away if she didn't know that to look away is to give in to what she wants to do and what she knows she can't. "We've talked and talked and talked about *everything* and nothing ever *changes*. I don't have anything left to say that you haven't heard a million times, and you don't have any excuses or explanations that I couldn't repeat back word-for-word."

"Things will -"

"Be different soon," Kami says with him. "There will be more Death Weapons and then you'll be home and then you'll be sober and you'll stop smoking and you'll stop partying and there won't be anyone but me." Spirit's voice fades into silence and she finishes the familiar argument on her own. "Everything will be great and we'll be a family again." Her throat closes up around the too-often broken promise. She has to swallow against it before she can ask, "Right?" in a tone that has gone gentle and sad at the edges.

Spirit stares at her blankly for a second before he looks away. Kami can see his throat working hard but he doesn't speak, and after a breath of silence she goes on. Her voice is very gentle now, as if her tone is trying to make up for the meaning of her words.

"It's never going to get better, Spirit. Not now. Maybe there was a time when we could have pulled it together, when we could have fixed this, but it's too late. It's been too late for a long time, honestly." She folds her arms in front of herself, tries not to curl her back protectively over them. "It's best if you have your own place to come back to when you're back in the city."

Spirit finds his voice. "I need to be close to Maka. She's my daughter." He sounds defensive, desperate, relieved to have such an unassailable argument.

Kami can't look at him for this. She is angry with him all the time, hurt and jealousy and bitterness so deeply ingrained that they drown out the remnant of love and affection for the man in front of her, but she knows this is going to hurt him more than anything she personally can say or do.

But she has to tell him. He deserves to know.

"Spirit, Maka…" It takes her a moment to summon up the courage to speak. In the silence the space is so quiet she doesn't even hear Spirit breathing. "Maka doesn't want to see you."

Kami doesn't look up until she hears Spirit clear his throat. When she does she wishes she hadn't. He has straightened his shoulders, tipped his head back; his eyes are hard and cold.

"What have you been telling her, Kami?" The ice in his voice doesn't belong there. Spirit has never been angry, never been any good at aggression on his own without a meister to lead him, but Kami has never threatened his relationship with Maka before.

"Nothing," she says, but he is talking over her, gaining steam as his frustration climbs.

"What *lies* have you been telling her? You've been turning my own *daughter* against me? How dare you drag her into this!"

"Spirit."

"Look, I understand why you're upset but it's got nothing to do with Maka. She deserves to be separate from this, how could you stoop to use her as a weapon against me -"

"Spirit."

"That is *low*, Kami, I thought you were better than -"

"SPIRIT."

The tone cuts off Spirit's tirade. Kami hasn't used her meister voice in years, on Spirit or anyone else. The instant effect is heady, fires her blood with forgotten adrenaline, and the accompanying nostalgia for a time when things were still okay tightens her throat with tears again. When she speaks the sound is choked and damp, but it doesn't matter.

"I haven't told her *anything*. She saw it herself."

Dead silence this time. Kami knows when Spirit starts breathing again from the pained hiss in his first inhale. She doesn't look at his eyes. She can't stand to see what's in them.

"She doesn't want you here." Her voice is very soft now, none of the commanding timbre clinging to it. It drops hollow into the space between them. "I tried to talk her into having you here. If she wanted you here I would do whatever I needed to to deal with my own issues, but she *doesn't*, and I am so, so sorry, Spirit, but I didn't make this mess and I don't think I can fix it for you."

There is a handful of breaths. With nothing else to listen to Kami counts hers, Spirit's, out-of-sync with each other so between them they fill the air with sound. She can tell when Spirit is going to speak by the deeper inhale he takes, can tell when he has to stop and clear his throat and try again, even as she keeps her eyes fixed on the toes of his shoes and her arms crossed tight in front of her.

"Okay."

The word sounds so unlike his voice that Kami glances up, not even sure that he is the one who spoke. He isn't looking at her, just staring off past her shoulder with nothing in particular in his eyes. She hasn't ever seen his expression so blank of emotion, as if he has been emptied out and left with nothing at all to call his own.

He doesn't look at her, just turns and leaves, managing the door handle with utter care and accompanying delay, as if he had never let himself out before. Kami doesn't move until the door clicks softly shut behind him, and then for a handful of seconds after she stays still, tightening her grip on her arms until she thinks she might be raising bruises under her fingers. Then she releases her hold finger by finger, carefully straightens her back and goes back down the hallway into the kitchen.

She gets halfway through making a cup of tea before the expression on Spirit's face sinks into her thoughts and really hits her, and then she can't even take the kettle off the stove before she folds up against the kitchen cabinets and covers her face in her hands and sobs, feeling like she has destroyed something precious and fragile.


	34. Complete

Marie has been dreaming about this day for years and years, starting within weeks of arriving at the Academy and learning that she could become a Death Weapon. For her first years as a student it was Roger featuring in the images at the back of her head; even with the distance of years and her affection for Stein, the nostalgic memory of that first daydream hurts in the never-healing part of her heart that whispers about what could have been in another world. But she has pictured Stein in the meister's place ever since they became partners; if she's honest with herself, it was him even before, while he was still partners with Spirit, before her injuries from that catastrophic failure of a fight with the Star Clan had entirely healed.

Now that it is here, the hours are going by too fast with the speeding pace special to long-anticipated events. There is too much to take in, too much import infusing every moment, and she keeps realizing that she is missing details, she can't remember the temperature of the air or the taste of the wind or the color of the sunlight on Stein's hair, and panic at missing these crucial details is almost as crippling as her fright at finally facing down a witch.

Stein seems perfectly calm, although she knows he's never fought a witch before either. His movements are loose with relaxation, face tipped up to the light, breathing calm and even and slow, without the rigid pattern of forced focus. He doesn't look at her, not like he's avoiding her gaze but as if he just *knows* she is behind him, as if he trusts her entirely to be where he needs her to be. The implied trust is thrilling, warming in her blood like syrup, and his lack of attention gives her time to watch his shoulders, watch the brush of his growing hair against the back of his neck - he needs another haircut, she thinks before she remembers that she won't be the one to make him do so with a cold awareness that entirely overcomes the flush of pleasure. And she's distracted again, forgetting to notice everything around her and forgetting that they are walking into a fight with a proper witch, and she wonders absently if she is deliberately skidding away from the focus of this fight.

Stein blinks, stops, and Marie goes still over his shoulder. She is holding her breath, she realizes, and Stein is staring off into the distance with the glazed look that she has come to identify as Soul Perception. Even then his body doesn't tense with anticipation; he just gazes at something she can't see, eyes skittering around an invisible perimeter, and then he holds out his right hand palm-up.

"Marie," he says, and Marie transforms, flipping forward so the handle of her weapon form smacks solidly into Stein's palm before he takes the full weight. His fingers curl around her handle and his thoughts curl into her head, the lingering glow of Soul Perception too vague to interpret but casting the world in fading halos in Marie's adopted vision.

He doesn't speak, barely thinks even now that Marie is privy to the top layer of his thoughts. His mind is blank, clear like glass and sharp-edged with focus, and she tries to imitate him, breathing out her panic and nostalgic sadness and affection until she feels less tense, nothing like as calm as Stein but better, more capable of performing at her best capacity. By the time her mind is clear Stein is several blocks down, his steps getting quieter with each pace until she can't hear them even with the echoing effect of the high-walled buildings that surround the narrow street. The quiet around them and the borrowed focus of Stein's head means Marie can hear the clicking well before she can see the witch.

The sound is familiar, a cricket's chirp high and piercing, but the sunlight glazing the street in light makes it uncanny, and when they round the last corner and face the witch it takes on an alien quality coming from the mouth of a girl as tall as Azusa, curved into softness at her hips and shoulders so she looks utterly nonthreatening. She is crouched into the shadows cast by a corner of walls coming together, eyes shining in the faintly caught sunlight, lips pursed into an "O" to create the grating whistle they have been following for the last few blocks.

She goes silent as soon as she sees them, mouth folding into a straight line and eyes going wider as she takes in the weapon in Stein's hand. They all go still for a long moment, dark eyes locking with green, breathing stilling until they all three, weapon and meister and witch, inhale at once, and then the witch shoves to her feet and darts sideways and Stein shifts his weight and swings Marie's weapon form. The angle is wrong and Marie only glances off the other girl's shoulder, but the weight is enough to throw off the witch's movement on its own. She skids sideways, catches herself on the wall, and when she looks up at Stein her teeth are bared and her eyes don't look human anymore.

She launches herself off the wall, hands reaching for Stein's shoulders and teeth bared; they are sharper than they should be, angled and fine-edged like needles, but her fingers close on Stein's jacket instead of his body and Stein takes a deliberate step backward to pull loose. The witch tips forward, stumbling to get her feet under her, and Stein's left hand comes forward to slam into her temple. Electricity and the faintest edge of emotion tingle through Marie, sparking down her veins as sensation rather than pain, but the witch convulses and drops, limbs gone limp and unresponsive for a moment.

A moment is all it takes. Stein's right hand is still free, and he is moving before she has fully hit the ground, swinging Marie around and down with all the strength he has trained over their years as partners. The weapon crunches through bone and blood and skin and the witch coughs, hisses like a failing machine, and goes still with the utter quiet of death.

Stein straightens to his full height, pulls his coat straight one-handed, and drops the weapon in his hand. Marie transforms before she hits the ground, landing hard on her knees at his side. She stares at the dissolving body in front of them, the visceral evidence of death fading into a soft purple glow, until the drift of Stein's cigarette smoke floats down to blur the air around her.

"That's it," he says. His voice is uncommonly soft, gentle as it never is after a battle. Marie realizes belatedly that his usual wave of violence never came, that he spent the entire combat calm and distant and relaxed, and the realization that he wasn't even trying, that this wasn't even a challenge for him, tightens her throat until she has to close her good eye against the hot burn of inadequacy.

There is a shift against her hair, as if of fingers skimming through the air just over her head, and the possibility that Stein might be about to *touch* her is so unbearable that she flings herself forward, scraping her knees against the stone of the street in her haste to escape from this too-late tenderness. The soul is warm against her palm, the pressure fluttering like a butterfly's wings against her palms; it feels like cotton candy on her tongue, melting into nothing almost before she can feel it, and tastes like nothing at all so there is only the lingering smoke of Stein against the back of her throat.

Marie can feel the tingle as she swallows, trailing down her throat like fingers against her skin, and then the warmth hits her, spreading out into her stomach and back up her throat and down her hands to her fingertips. When she opens her eyes the world is glowing, everything she looks at turned into a miniature sun, flaring bright and hot and beautiful in her vision.

She almost doesn't look at Stein, almost can't stand to see him, but then she imagines *not* doing so and the alternative is far worse, so she tips her head sideways and up and he is shining too, his hair turning white-gold in her momentarily bright vision. His glasses catch the light she is giving off, and all she can see is herself in the reflection, outlined in light like an angel and folded over her knees like the human she is. She can see herself smile, can see the sadness in her face and her eye and can't make herself hide them.

Stein reaches up to hold his cigarette steady while he sucks in a breath. When he sighs an exhale the smoke hides his face for a moment.

"Congratulations." His voice is very soft now, the hint of gentleness from before clear and audible now, but there is a distraction in his voice and Marie knows entirely that he's not really seeing her for all that his face is aimed in her direction.

She looks away, down at her translucent glowing hands, and chokes a laugh-sob over the sound of Stein twisting the screw in his head. "Thanks."


	35. Beginnings

The Academy is bigger than Kami remembers it in an inversion of the usual response to adult visit to a childhood fixture. She hadn't realized how long it had been until last night, after Maka's things were packed and her daughter had gone to bed hours later than she usually does. She hasn't been in here years, which feels odd, but then she hasn't had any reason to visit until now.

Maka is staring up at the building in front of her like she's never seen it before, which is ridiculous; just because Kami hasn't been here doesn't mean that Maka and Black*Star haven't made it their regular playground ever since they were old enough to more or less look after themselves. But now Maka's eyes are wide with nerves as much as they are darkened with exhaustion, and she is chewing her lip in a way that reminds Kami very much of Spirit.

"Maka." Kami's hand brushes the back of Maka's clean white shirt. Her daughter is standing very straight, posture perfect with all the self-reliance she likes to assume, but in the end she is only twelve and it is just a facade, even though it is unlikely anyone but Kami would recognize it as such.

"I'll be fine, Mom." Maka doesn't look at her, doesn't shift her body at all, even when Kami goes down to one knee and wraps her arms around Maka's skinny shoulders. It is rather like hugging a statue for all that Maka moves, but the stiffness in her position reminds Kami of her own response to stress, of fights that she picked instead of collapsing into tears, and the strange happy tears of nostalgia come up to flush her face with warmth.

"I know you will be, darling." Her voice has taken on a odd sound, half-laugh and half-sob, and Kami wonders if she will always sound like this when she talks to her daughter now, caught between pride at her half-adult creation and hazy memories of the child she used to be.

There is a pause. Kami waits it out. She knows Maka perfectly well, not just from years of seeing her daughter for nearly every hour of the day but also with the intuitive understanding of mothers for their children. Spirit seems to have missed out on that; the thought is bittersweet, nearly sad, but not as painful as it was just a few weeks ago. Hearts heal quickly, especially when Kami has been saying that goodbye for a long, long time.

Finally Maka's too-adult stiffness crumbles, and she twists to catch her arms around Kami's neck and bury her tears in Kami's newly-short hair.

"What if they don't like me?" The words are soft, not torn by the edges of frightened sobs, and Kami wouldn't hear them at all were it not for the fact that Maka's mouth is inches from her ear. She hugs her back, maybe tighter than she would have a week or a month or a year ago, but she doesn't know when she'll see Maka again and her daughter doesn't complain.

"They'll love you. Of course they will. You already know Black*Star and most of the professors."

"But I need to find a partner. How am I going to find the right one?"

That Kami can't answer. It's like asking how you know you're in love or how to meet your best friend, and there is no comforting answer until it has already happened and you've experienced the sense of *rightness* that goes along with the event. "You'll know it when you find it."

Kami can't see Maka roll her eyes, but the leading edge of teenage skepticism is in her tone when she responds. "Thanks, mom. That's a big help."

Kami laughs, but her throat is a little tight with tears and the sound has the sob quality that Maka has avoided thus far. She closes her eyes so she doesn't have to see the inexplicably threatening Academy looming over them, the building that she knows will become home to Maka just like it was home for her, tiny student apartment notwithstanding. There was always going to be a time when she was going to have to let Maka grow up into independence. Better that it happen now, a little sooner than either of them wants it, than that they wait until the angst of adolescence has pushed them apart, however temporary.

"You will be fine," she says, and because Maka is still twelve the parental comfort of sincerity soothes the lingering tension from her shoulders. "Papa's still here. You know he'll do anything to help you."

"I don't want his help." That is petulant, angry and brittle around the edges. Kami doesn't sigh because Maka's too close to miss it, but she wants to. She hasn't told Spirit anything other than that she is leaving, that Maka is starting at the Academy and she will be out of the country, but she is hoping that in her absence father and daughter can reconnect. Guilt is unfamiliar to her and deeply unpleasant, and she can't feel much of anything else at the knowledge that Maka has started fighting Kami's battles with Spirit rather than turning to him for support.

Maybe abandoning the city is selfish too, pursuing her own dreams with the excuse of forcing Maka and Spirit together to repair their broken relationship. But Kami has spent too long turning the situation over and over and over in her head, wearing off the edges of obvious solutions until there is just the shiny-smooth anxiety of a constant unsolved problem, and at least this will change the situation dramatically. At this point a change is the best she can hope for, to shake up what's going on a little in an effort to find a solution.

And she's running. Running away from her collapsing marriage-in-name-only with Spirit, running away from the constant knowledge of her failure as a meister, running away from her failed relationships and her failed career and her failure at nearly everything. She's not running away from Maka, though. Maka's the only thing she can be proud of and if there were a way to escape the weight of everything else and keep Maka with her, Kami would do that. Taking her daughter with her when she leaves, detaching the daughter they share from her ever-doting father and her friends and her Academy potential would be ultimately selfish, though. At least this way, when Maka straightens her shoulders and wipes her eyes and smiles shakily at Kami, Kami knows that she's not making the *worst* decision she can make.

It is some comfort, especially once Maka has gone into the Academy and Kami has turned her back on the Academy and the City and turned her face up to the warmth of the springtime sun. It is enough.


	36. Last

The wine is starting to grow on her.

Marie doesn't usually drink much, and when she does her tastes run towards the variety that is distinctly pink, but Azusa is with her and her friend refuses to be seen in public with her while she is drinking what the other weapon will only refer to as "that trash," so tonight it has been nothing but the dark reds that the crossbow favors. It wasn't the best at first, but by now Marie is starting to appreciate the bitter tang at the back of her tongue, and Azusa is happy, and this is at least as much a party for the other girl as it is for her.

Azusa isn't looking at her, has been staring off at the far wall for some time now, but her high cheekbones have been flushed for quite a while now, and her usually sharp tongue has gone surprisingly quiet. Marie expected the verbal directness to only get worse with the addition of alcohol, but she can't seem to stop talking so Azusa's unusual silence is a perfect backdrop at the moment.

"I just don't know what I'm going to do, you know?" The wine in her glass is catching the light, drawing out the pattern of ripples as she swirls the liquid absently. "I haven't been on my own in ten years now."

"You always complain about Stein being gone on other assignments and leaving you alone," Azusa points out, but her voice is soft and dull-edged, just honest instead of painfully so.

Marie's smiling admission turns into a self-deprecating laugh in her throat. "I know. I know I do. But there's you, and Sid and Nygus, and all the people I've gone to school with all these years and I know this city and oh god, I'm going to get *so* lost."

Azusa actually laughs at that, a short explosion of amusement before she cuts herself off. "You will."

"It'll be terrible," Marie says, but there's no real panic in her tone because she can't remember ever hearing Azusa laugh before and she can't stop smiling. The alcohol is warming her body and making her feel relaxed and faintly sleepy, and it stops her from thinking before she reaches out to rest her hand against Azusa's wrist.

The other girl very nearly jerks away. Marie can feel the muscles go tight in her arm, can see the lingering amusement vanish from her face as if it were never there, but when she leaves her arm where it is Marie doesn't move either.

"Azusa."

There is something in her tone that gives her away; Azusa raises an eyebrow smoothly even through her nervous tension and the faint slip of consonants on her tongue. "I didn't know you got touchy-feely with wine."

"Look, Azusa." Marie gracefully handles her friend's commentary by entirely ignoring it. "I'm really going to miss you." Azusa's eyebrows go down, her mouth straightens from its adopted quirk of a smile. "You're basically my best friend, really, and I know I've been an idiot about a lot of things and especially Stein but I'm going to turn things around. I'll go to Oceania and I'll find some nice guy and get married and I don't know that I'll ever see you again but you've been great, really great to me, and I just appreciate that because I know you don't really like Stein and it must have been a pain to listen to me all these years. So just - thanks."

"You're thanking me for being your friend." It would be a question if it were someone else and it would be dark amusement on another day for Azusa, but she goes straight down the middle of the two options and it just sounds like a flat statement.

"Yes." Marie smiles again and can't stop, grinning until her face hurts, and even then she can't get her amusement under control. Azusa's glasses, always inexplicably more reflective than Stein's, are whited-out with glare, and something about the dulled edge in the other weapon's tone reminds Marie of her...ex-meister, she supposes would be the proper term.

"You kind of look like Stein when you do that," she is saying before her brain can catch up and pull back the words.

Azusa's chin comes down sharply as she briefly tries to rearrange every aspect of her face into something else. With the shine gone, her eyes are visible and the resemblance vanishes. Marie forgets that Azusa's eyes are blue like they are, so dark they look black if you haven't seen them frequently.

"I assume you mean that as a *compliment.*" The younger girl's sharp tone is back, turning the last word into an insult as she enunciates it with razor clarity.

Marie laughs. She knows how Azusa feels about Stein, and she hadn't really thought it through, but it's very hard to feel like anything at all is important just at the moment. "Of course I did."

"Of course you did." Azusa echoes back, but there is a tiny twist of a smile at the corner of her mouth. Marie considers herself forgiven.

It is hours later that they finally leave, and Marie doesn't remember much of their conversation, just the slow unravelling of Azusa's regular tension, the bubbling laughter that composed a greater and greater part of their conversation. Azusa walks her home, steadier on her feet than Marie thought she possibly could be or at least doing a better job of pretending to be. The reality of her impending transfer doesn't hit Marie until she's outside the grey laboratory, her room inside filled with mostly-packed boxes and only hers for the night and the morning.

Azusa's arm is around her shoulder, holding her somewhat steady, but the other girl doesn't pull away when Marie twists towards her and wraps her in a hug.

"I -" She doesn't know exactly what she wants to say, has said it all already. "Thank you. I'm scared and frightened and really pretty drunk but thank you, so much."

Azusa's arms catch around her shoulders, press her tight in reciprocation for just a moment. "He never deserved you," she says, clear and as sharp as if she hasn't had anything to drink at all.

Marie laughs into Azusa's shoulder. At least this is the same, as if nothing is changing, as if she'll still have her best friend in the morning instead of a new home on a new continent and nothing but strangers all around her, and maybe that's what makes her answer Azusa's comment for once.

"No. But he needed me."


End file.
